University of Richmond Athletics
Spider Soccer At La Salle Thursday, Home Sunday
10/22/2015 | Women's Soccer
Richmond soccer plays its next-to-last regular season weekend with two Atlantic 10 Conference games. The Spiders are at La Salle Thursday night at 7 p.m. before a home date with Fordham on Sunday at 1 p.m. Admission to both games is free.
Richmond dropped both games last weekend at home, a 2-1 loss to Saint Joseph's and 1-0 defeat to league-leading George Washington. The Spiders are 4-9-1 overall and 2-3-1 in the A-10. La Salle is 6-7-2 overall, 3-3 in the league. Fordham is 10-5 overall and tied for third in the standings at 4-2.
Richmond got its second goal in three games from junior Hunter Rooney (Littleton, Colorado), who was a career defender pressed into duty as a forward. Both of her goals (at Saint Louis and home to Saint Joseph's) came in the first 20 minutes of the game. The Spiders are led in scoring by senior tri-captain Ashley Riefner (Mechanicsville, Virginia / Atlee HS) and her three goals and six assists. Nine Spiders have scored the team's 16 goals.
Despite the record, Richmond has actually spent more playing time in the lead (259 minutes) than they have training (243 minutes) in a game. Even more impressively (and quirky) is the fact that the Spiders have led for nearly 115 minutes in conference, trailing by a little over 47 minutes. The Spiders have led or been tied in all six conference games sometime between the 60 and 70-minute mark. Two of Richmond's three conference losses came with 10:01 or later remaining on the clock, and all three came in the last half of the second half.
La Salle is 3-1-2 at home and 30-4-4 at home since 2011. The Explorers are two points ahead of the Spiders for the last spot for the conference tournament, which accepts eight teams. Thursday's game is the last of three consecutive home games for La Salle. The Explorers are led in scoring by Fla Johnson and Marykate Bateman, who have eight points each. Bateman's four goals are tops for La Salle. The Explorers are equal to Richmond in their 16 total goals scored, whereas the Spiders have allowed one fewer goal than La Salle.
Fordham will swing through Richmond to finish a three-game road stretch after a date with George Washington on Thursday. The Rams already have a 10-game goal-scorer in Jessica Widmann, who is second in the league in that category. She leads the conference in game-winning goals, with five. Fordham has only been shutout once this season, their second game of the year, at Maine on August 23. Fordham's primary keeper, Megan Fitzgerald, has six shutouts on her own and a combined shutout with back-up keeper Adaeze Obinelo. Three of their four conference wins were by shutout.
Richmond is 5-5 in the all-time series against La Salle and 7-3-1 against Fordham, but the Spiders have not played either team since 2012, and only three players on the current roster (Riefner, Dana Bernetich and Darian Podmajersky) have played either team.
