SXU Athletics
The Saint Xavier women’s soccer team has gotten on a roll.
The Cougars have not lost in their last three matches, dating back to their resounding 6-0 win over Holy Cross College on homecoming Sept. 27.
They have followed that performance up with a 1-1 draw at Judson University last Wednesday and a 2-0 victory over Purdue University on Saturday.
The Cougars’ record as of Monday was 3-4-3 overall with a 2-1-1 mark in the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference.
Saint Xavier earned the draw against Judson in one of sophomore goalkeeper Alex Perry’s finest performances of the season.
In her 110 minutes of play last Wednesday, she made nine stops and allowed just the one goal against.
Perry’s one goal against came in the 39th minute, when Judson midfielder Hannah Condit fed the ball to substitute Jordan Rossi.
Rossi came through to beat Perry for the 1-nil advantage.
The Cougars equalized in the second half and would not allow any more scores nor score themselves.
In the 60th minute, sophomore substitute Christina Sperando got a pass through to sophomore midfielder Brittany Kroening, who buried for her second goal of the season.
It was Sperando’s first point of the season.
The Cougars gave up chances defensively, as Judson finished the match with 14 shots (10 on goal), but Perry was up to the task.
Saint Xavier, on the other hand, did not have many offensive chances, but the Cougars were efficient.
They scored their lone goal on nine total shots, five of which were directed on target.
The Cougars had significantly more offensive chances in their match against the Peregrines of Purdue University Calumet.
Saint Xavier got 17 shots away in that contest, directing 10 of them toward the goal.
It was a strong offensive showing for Saint Xavier, led by junior forward Lexi Cozzi.
She scored twice in short succession to ensure victory for the Cougars against the Peregrines.
Cozzi’s first goal came on a feed from sophomore midfielder Delanie Bosworth in the 25th minute of action.
Cozzi then broke away from the Peregrine defense and struck from 15 yards out to beat opposing goalkeeper Erika Brinkman.
Cozzi’s next goal was from even deeper. This time she took a pass from junior forward Christina Szocka and laid into a shot from 25 yards away from the goal. Again, she beat Brinkman to take a 2-0 lead.
Perry backed up her performance against Judson with her first clean sheet of the year.
She made stops on each of the four shots she faced in the Purdue University Calumet match.
The defense did a better job of putting pressure on the Peregrines, limiting them to 12 shots. That pressure led to just four of those shots being on target.
With Perry’s shutout, the Cougars now have two as a team.
Her save percentage has grown to .828 and her goals against average has shrunk to 1.66 with these last two goalkeeping clinics.
The other clean sheet for Cougar goalkeeping came in a strong defensive performance by Saint Xavier as an overall team.
Senior keeper Danielle Koncius made both of the stops she needed to against Holy Cross for a homecoming victory last Saturday.
After her two-goal game, Cozzi leads the Cougars in points with 12 (five goals and two assists) in just eight matches played.
Cozzi is followed by senior midfielder Morgan Graves (four goals, one assist) and sophomore midfielder Julia Gawlak (three goals, three assists), who each have nine points on the season.
The women’s soccer team will have its work cut out for it in coming matches with six of the final seven regular season games of the year being conference matches.
These tough games include matchups against Olivet Nazarene University, Robert Morris University and Trinity Christian College, which were all either ranked or received votes in the NAIA preseason top-25 coaches’ poll.
Next up for the Cougars is Olivet Nazarene in a 5 p.m. Saturday matchup in Bourbonnais, Illinois.
Tim Carroll
Senior Sports Editor
Twitter
@TimCarroll_XAV
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