Women’s soccer defeats Ivy rival Cornell, falls to Colgate

The Columbia women’s soccer team began Ivy League competition with a victory over Cornell, but the Lions (4-4-1, 1-0-0 Ivy) could not maintain their winning streak in a nonconference bout with Colgate.

“We had the opportunity to develop some consistency and cohesion within our performance level, and we failed to do that,” head coach Kevin McCarthy said. “If you’re not mentally tough and conscious about being disciplined in every moment of the match, it costs you, and we learned that lesson.”

Columbia and Cornell (1-7-1, 0-1-0 Ivy) competed on Friday night in the first match-up between two league foes this season. Sophomore forward Ashlin Yahr scored her team-high fifth goal in the 15th minute to give Columbia a 1-0 lead, a margin that it would not relinquish. With the victory, the Lions are positioned atop the league standings along with Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale.

“Every single game is going to be a battle to the end, and Cornell was no different,” senior forward Sophie Reiser said. “We may have only scored one goal, but we know how important each of those games are, especially considering how we lost to Harvard last year.”

Last season, Columbia started conference play with a 3-1 win over Cornell. The Lions entered the final weekend of Ivy competition in a three-way tie for first place, but they fell to Harvard by a 2-1 score with nine seconds left in the second overtime.

On Sunday afternoon, Columbia traveled to Colgate (4-5-2, 0-0-0 Patriot). After fewer than two minutes of action, freshman defender Sarah Henderson put the Raiders on the scoreboard with her first career goal. Columbia took 17 shots to Colgate’s nine, but the Lions also committed five offside offenses. They could not find the back of the net and fell in junior goalkeeper Lindsay Danielson’s first career start for Columbia.

“Every goal we give up, there’s always five or six players who could have made a play to change our fate. Any time we score a goal, it takes a collective effort of at least four, five, six people to make that happen,” McCarthy said. “We are only as good as how well we are connected, and when we don’t have that cohesion and we don’t consistently do that, we’re going to be a mediocre team. And that’s what we are right now.”