The Biola women’s soccer team ended their preseason with a 4-1 home win over the University of California, Santa Cruz last Friday, Sept. 22 and started the regular season with a 2-1 overtime loss against The Master’s College in a Golden State Athletic Conference match on Tuesday in Santa Clarita.

In the first half against Santa Cruz, both teams started off strong as neither team was able to score until the 39th minute. Senior Taylor Lundquist took a corner for the Eagles and landed it right into the box where junior Michelle Andre headed it into the net. The half ended with the Eagles leading the Banana Slugs 1-0.

“I think our big problem this season is just getting a lot of opportunities and not scoring on them and taking advantage of them,” Andre said. “So the first half we had a lot of opportunities but no one really stepped up and put one in, until the end.”

Biola controls second half

The second half was dominated by the Eagles as they landed three more goals. The second came in the 54th minute when a wide open shot by sophomore Miranda Starbeck changed the score to 2-0. Two more goals came in after that including an impressive, well-placed goal to the top right of the net by Lundquist. Junior Jessica Austin took advantage of a breakaway in the 68th minute. Santa Cruz managed a goal in the 89th minute to leave the score at 4-1.

“After we got one goal in we felt a little more confident,” Andre said. “Because we knew we could actually score. So I think the girls got really pumped up and fired up to score more.”

The Master's College ended the Eagle's season last year by defeating Biola in penalty kicks during a playoff game. On Tuesday the Eagles faced The Master's and fell short once again.

Eagles can't catch Mustangs

The Mustangs scored an early goal in the 16th minute with Shea Richards giving The Master’s a 1-0 lead. Seven minutes later, and after playing aggressive offense, sophomore Amanda Lillicrop managed to score a goal to recover from the one-goal deficit for the Eagles, evening it up. Biola ended the half with seven shots on goal, and The Master's with eight.

The second half was dominated by the Mustangs. They had five shots on goal compared to the Eagle's two, but despite the pressure, the score stayed tight until the end of the match. The Eagles were unable to muster a second goal in the second half and were forced into a golden goal overtime.

Just two minutes into overtime, the Eagles gave up a corner kick and Master’s Richards scored the winning goal to end the match at 2-1.

“We’re optimistic but we know that our conference is tough. There’s a lot of good teams in our conference,” head coach Todd Elkins said. “We’ve been trying and working hard at it to try to be a little bit more dangerous in the attack.”

Biola now has an overall record of 3-4-1 and continues conference play this weekend with a match against Concordia University in Irvine at 4 p.m on Saturday.