The Quinnipiac women’s soccer team defeated Manhattan 5-1 after a loss against Iona this past Saturday, October 15. 

This past Saturday, Quinnipiac lost their first in MAAC conference game after a scoreless round for the Bobcats. After this weekend’s loss, the Bobcats looked to turn it around for Wednesday’s game against Manhattan College. 

“We used the term reaction with the players,” said Head Coach Dave Clarke. “Saturday was disappointing on a few levels, with the loss obviously and everything that came with it but challenging them to have a reaction because that’s what you need and that’s what good teams do.”

Clarke said that the team needed to work on reaction coming into today’s game. He felt that they had lacked it during Saturday’s match, which was part of the reason they lost that game.  

“It’s hard to be undefeated all season,” said senior Olivia Scott. “So it’s kinda a reality check that we’d rather lose then, then lose later.” 

Scott managed to score her first two goals of the season during today’s game. She scored her first goal of the season just 1:39 into the game. 

Soon after Scott’s first goal, she would score once again with an assist from Quinnipiac’s Courtney Chochol. 

“Yeah, honestly, when they went in I was just kind of shocked and I didn’t know what to expect,” Scott said. “I’ve been working really hard all season and I don’t really put up a lot of stats so it was nice to get a little recognition for hard work,” 

Soon after, Molly Andrews and Rebecca Cooke got into a two-to-one advantage and Andrews scored her first goal of the season to increase the Bobcats’ lead to 3-0. 

At 40:21 in the first half, Ella Gagno shot one into the right corner of the net after an assist from Cooke and Markela Bejleri. 

“Rebecca screamed at me to shoot, so I think I just did what I was told and I wasn’t really thinking and it just went in,” Gagno said.

Manhattan scored their only goal of the game during the first half after a shot from Sami Derrico. 

At the end of the first half, Quinnipiac continued to hold onto the lead with a score of 4-1 against Manhattan.

While the second half of the game did not have as much offensive power, it did display the Bobcat’s defensive skills.

 “At halftime, we were pushing for a solid defensive game,” Scott said. “ In the end, it was just about the team, I wouldn’t say a clean sheet at that point since one goal went in but we didn’t want to let any more in.”

Clarke’s goal for the next few games is to keep pushing the defense. While he feels like they have a strong offense, he doesn’t just want to rely on that during the playoffs. 

“At some point in time they gotta clean up some of the defense so that it doesn’t become an issue in a week, two weeks, three weeks, whatever the case may be,” Clarke said. 

The Bobcats were able to keep Manhattan from scoring again in the second half.

It wasn’t all defense in the second half though. Cooke did score her 19th goal of the season and now holds the MAAC lead in goals. 

Quinnipiac kept on fighting until the end and finished with a dominant win against Manhattan.

The Bobcats will look to add another tallie to the win column with their next game away at Saint Peter’s this Saturday, October 22 at 12:00 p.m.