The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s soccer team let a two goal lead slip away in the second half and battled to a 2-2 draw Friday night at Finley Stadium in Southern Conference action.
The Mocs are now 5-8-2 overall and 3-2-1 in league play while the Bucs move to 9-4-2 on the year and 4-1-1- in SoCon action.
“ETSU is a good team and they’re creative and they have a lot of dangerous players,” Chattanooga head coach Gavin McKinney said. “They fought back really well.
“With us going up two-nil, obviously very disappointed not to come away with the three points, but I think all-in-all it was a really positive performance for us.
We saw improvements from our performance last Friday.”
Chattanooga struck first on a long, lofting pass from junior Emily Moseley (Nashville, Tenn.) from just inside midfield to the 18-yard box over the line. Freshman Jordan Mueller (Hendersonville, Tenn.) broke free and picked up the pass, sending her shot into the net to put the Mocs up 1-0 in the eighth minute.
Mueller would connect again for her first multi-goal game of her career. This time was an early strike in the second half off a corner kick from junior McKenzie Gregg (Newport, Tenn.). Gregg sent the kick to the far post and Mueller picked it up and headed it through to give UTC a two goal advantage at the 48:23 mark of the match.
East Tennessee State cut the Mocs’ lead to just one score on the 12th goal of the season from Eleonora Goldoni. She pushed past the Chattanooga defenders and her shot hit off UTC freshman keeper Melia Correa (Clarksville, Tenn.) who was sliding in to stop the shot. The ball bounced off and over Correa and Goldoni jumped to her feet and managed to shoot it into an open net in the 59th minute.
The Bucs knotted it up 2-2 at the 65:44 mark of the match on a goal from Georgia Allen. In a strong defensive battle the remainder of the way, neither team was able to score and sent the match into overtime
Correa had two big saves in the extra period, stopping one shot fired from 10 yards out. ETSU outshot the Mocs’ 15-12 and had a narrow 6-5 shots on goal advantage. Correa made four saves on the night in 110 minutes in goal.
“I thought the team worked extremely hard all together when we were out of possession,” McKinney said. “Momentum can swing when you’re up two-nil and the other team comes back. We didn’t let it put us down. We created some chances that could have won it for us as did they.”
On Sunday, the Mocs will honor its five seniors prior to its match against Western Carolina at 2 p.m. Admission is free and concessions will be available. Come early and enjoy OctoberFest at the Chattanooga Market.