When Marquette women’s soccer players told the audio booth to keep turning up the music louder during warmups, their mentality heading into their final non-conference game against St. Thomas was evident.
Though, the outcome wasn’t entirely what it wanted.
After two quick goals in the first half, the Golden Eagles (3-4-2) drew the Tommies (2-2-3) 1-1 Sunday afternoon at Valley Fields.
“It’s a fair result,” Marquette head coach Frank Pelaez said. “We had a couple more opportunities in the second half that we didn’t capitalize on, but they’re a good team. They’ve gotten better since last year. We’ve got a great record scoring goals and we’re still trying to work our way to get through that stage.”
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First-year midfielder Emily Fix scored her first career goal and senior goalkeeper Mikki Easter, who came back from a red card suspension, finished with one save.
St. Thomas junior forward Mariah Nguyen scored the Tommies’ only goal and junior midfielder Camryn Rintoul had a match-high three shots.
Back-to-back goals
For the first 24 minutes, Marquette and St. Thomas went back-and-forth with nothing to show for it.
Then lightning struck twice.
The first goal of the game came in the 25th minute when Nguyen dribbled through a defender and found the net at the top left corner of the box.
The Golden Eagles’ revenge came just two minutes later when Fix headed the ball into the high right side of the net to score her first collegiate goal.
“It was a perfectly floated ball and I hit my head and I watched it go in,” Fix said. “I blacked out after the goal. I just didn’t even know what happened. I was like, ‘Did it go in or not?'”
Maggie Starker setup Emily Fix at the far post for her first career goal. Tied 1-1 with St. Thomas in the 37th minute. pic.twitter.com/TEVCvXZQK2
— MARQUETTE Soccer (@MarquetteWSOC) September 17, 2023
Neither team changed the scoreboard for the rest of the first 45 minutes, going into the locker rooms tied 1-1.
“That’s the time you want to set,” Pelaez said. “If someone smacks you in the face, you turn around and smack them back, and we’re starting to get there now. We just finished on non-conference. Now we’re going to jump into Big East. Every game we’ve learned lessons now we just got to put them all together.”
There were some chances for both sides in the final half but nothing came to fruition and the game ended even on the scoresheet.
Up Next
The Golden Eagles start Big East play against the DePaul Blue Devils (4-2-1) Thursday at Valley Fields. The game kicks-off at 7 p.m. CST.
This story was written by Benjamin Hanson. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @benhansonMU.
