Offensive woes doom women’s soccer in league play

For the Columbia women’s soccer team, winning means scoring more than one goal in a matchup. The Lions’ five multiple-goal performances this season have all been victories, while the team is 1-6-3 when it scores one or fewer goals in a game.

The formula is simple enough to understand, but Columbia has often had difficulty with its execution. Rather than steadily generating goals, the Lions’ offense has been explosive in some games and nonexistent in others. Columbia’s sporadic production has turned the team from an Ivy League championship contender into a middle-of-the-pack squad.

Columbia opened Ivy play with a 1-0 victory at Cornell, the Lions’ first and only win this year behind a one-goal effort. A major reason for the Lions’ struggles in league play is that they have tallied multiple goals against only one Ivy opponent. Columbia scored four goals on 14 shots to overtake Penn, 4-2, on Oct. 10.

Sophomore Ashlin Yahr and senior Sophie Reiser lead the Lions with eight and six goals, respectively. Last season, Yahr finished with 10 tallies while Reiser tied for the league high with 12. As a result of her success on the offensive end, Reiser was named the 2008 Ivy League Player of the Year.

Columbia boasts two of the league’s top scorers, but Reiser and Yahr have not carried the Lions’ offense on a steady basis. Three of Reiser’s goals came in one game, a nonconference matchup with Manhattan College on Sept. 11. While Reiser has scored in three games since then, she has only found the back of the net once during conference play.

Yahr has been the Lions’ most prolific player in league competition, but even she has been inconsistent. She provided Columbia’s only goal against Cornell and scored twice against Penn, but she could not dent the scoresheet at Princeton or Dartmouth.

“Certainly, teams are going to create game plans that are designed to stifle them,” head coach Kevin McCarthy said of Reiser and Yahr. “It’s important for them to grow and develop so that they can find ways to continue on the level that they have been, and it’s important for other people to step up.”

Juniors Kelly Hostetler and Chrissy Butler, as well as sophomore Marissa Schultz, have scored two goals apiece for the Lions this year. Schultz and Hostetler provided all of Columbia’s offense in its 3-2 victory over nonconference foe Central Connecticut State, but neither one of them has scored since that game. Butler, meanwhile, tallied goals against Penn and Marist.

Columbia must end its scoring slump in order to challenge Yale and Harvard, its final two opponents of the season. The Lions have not found the back of the net since beating Marist in a nonconference matchup on Oct. 13. Columbia followed that performance with a scoreless draw at Princeton and a 2-0 loss at Dartmouth. Against the Big Green, the Lions took only five shots.

“One of the most successful parts of our offense is our ability to break free from our defenders and find that open space where we can play,” Reiser said. “That’s why with Dartmouth, they literally did not let go of our jerseys. They didn’t let us get more than two steps away.”

McCarthy believes that the Lions will succeed when they are proactive on the field.

“When we are going forward and attacking well and producing, there’s a mentality that runs through the entire team,” he said. “It’s about taking the initiative, being on the front foot, looking to play forward quickly, getting the numbers up from the back to support the attack. And when we are going to be playing like that, it puts us in the best positions to score.”