Cougars Overcome Statesmen to Reach Regional Quarterfinals

Like last Friday's Concorde District final loss to Westfield, all three goals during the Oakton Cougars' first-round regional match-up against Marshall came off of penalty corners.

But on Wednesday evening, the Cougars were the ones putting away the bulk of the chances, with junior forward Emily Corridon scoring in each half to propel the Cougars to a 2-1 win and launch them into the Northern Region quarterfinals.

Oakton Coach Kate Ruch praised Corridon's recent scoring streak after the game.

"I wanna say [Corridon] has had four goals in the last three games—and so she has really developed herself into a strong scorer and to be able to put herself in the right position to be able to score."

The first of Corridon's goals capitalized on a slow start by the visiting Statesmen, whose season concluded with the loss.

After Oakton junior forward Kara Leonard helped win a penalty corner just over seven minutes into the game, senior Madison Ray's hit made it out to junior midfielder Adelle Clinton. Clinton drove the ball across the arc and the face of the goal, where Clinton put it in the back of the net.

"I think we took the first 10 minutes to get into the game," said Marshall Coach Christina Carroll. "Unfortunately they scored in those 10 minutes."

Marshall recovered after withstanding the rest of Oakton's early pressure, playing their way into some dangerous scoring chances as the first half went on. With almost seven minutes remaining in the half, Statesmen forwards Emily Sexton and Paige Veoni linked up dangerously, but were ultimately snuffed out by the Cougars' defense, which played junior Danielle Somadelis as sweeper in place of senior Rachel Kuykendall, who returned from injury against Marshall but played sparingly.

The momentum swung even more toward Marshall's favor as the second half opened, with the Statesmen earning four penalty corners in the half's first 10 minutes as the visitors pushed for an equalizer. But the execution on those opportunities proved profligate.

"That's kind of typical of our corners," Carroll said.

She went on to explain that, "come the game situation, we take too many touches or we don't get the shot off. There's some breakdown."

Indeed, of Marshall's seven penalty corners on the night, only one resulted in a goal. That goal came when Sexton put in a scramble off a penalty corner with almost four minutes remaining in the contest.

Sexton's goal sparked the Statesmen to life, but as Carroll said after the match: "Too little too late." By then, Oakton, which converted two of its four penalty corners on the night, had already notched the deciding goal.

On the Cougars' second tally, which came with almost five minutes left in the second half, the ball came out to senior defender Erin Keenan toward the top of the arc. Keenan's driven ball across was out of goalkeeper's Chandani Rana's range and found Corridon waiting on the back post for the tap-in.

Ruch was relieved that Corridon's finish propelled the Cougars (11-10, 5-3 Concorde District) to the next round of the playoffs.

"So I think that, overall, it was just about who could score at the right time. And Marshall really scared us especially at the end. They played extremely hard and it was a very well-balanced game," Ruch said.

But Ruch was left eyeing a more consistent performance from her team in the next round after Marshall came into the contest in the second half.

"We're in good shape," Ruch said. "It's just about playing smarter in the second half and that comes with time, sometimes, and experience. So we're gonna work on it in practice, to be able to play that stronger second half instead of putting all our eggs in the basket in the first half."

Oakton will play the winner of Friday's Mt. Vernon-Annandale match-up at 7 p.m. Monday. The game will be hosted by the higher seed.