Horns duel with the Dinos

By Dale Woodard on October 5, 2021.

The University of Lethbridge Pronghorns women’s soccer team pushed back.

It wasn’t quite enough for the win, but still enough to make their opponent earn it as the Horns fell 3-1 to the Calgary Dinos in Canada West play Saturday afternoon at the University of Lethbridge Stadium.

Pronghorn Lucy Mundy scored on a penalty shot in the 60th minute to cut the Dinos’ lead to 2-1 before the visitors added one more in the 78th minute to come away with the road win.

The Dinos wrapped up the 2-0 weekend with a 5-0 victory over the Horns in the rematch Sunday in Calgary for a pair of losses that drops Lethbridge to 0-6, but Mundy and Horns head coach Macky Singh noted a team that didn’t back down Saturday afternoon against the now 6-1-1 Dinos.

“Honestly, I was proud of the girls,” said Mundy.

“We all battled. The U of C is already a tough competitor, but we did what we were asked, everybody did their jobs and that’s important. As a team, I thought we played well and we battled. We fought and didn’t get bullied out there. We fought back. So I thought that was definitely an improvement from the last time we played them.”

The Dinos got on the board quickly when Montana Leonard opened the scoring six minutes in and the visitors went up 2-0 on a goal from Shyanne Hedges in the 53rd minute.

But with a little over 20 minutes to go, Mundy was awarded a penalty shot she made no mistake on for her second goal of the season that trimmed Calgary’s lead to 2-1.

“Brooke (Barcelona) put in the work, I just did the easy part,” said Mundy.

“I was proud of her. She got that foul and it was just a matter of focusing and not letting the pressure get to you on those.”

Kelsie MacDonald rounded out the scoring for the Dinos in the 78th minute.

“We had a weekend off last weekend, so we regrouped and had a plan how we were going to play going forward and the girls executed, big time,” said Singh.

“I also told them ‘Let’s not get bullied and stay aggressive,’ and they did that. I can’t complain about how they performed today. We went down 1-0 in the first five minutes and that was ‘OK, let’s see how we regroup.’ The girls came out firing and did really well. The game plan was to play wide and attack and we were really successful in doing that for at least 70 minutes of the game and then we ran a little bit out of legs.”

Prior to Mundy’s goal, Horns goaltender Erin Gill was called up to keep it 2-0, making a leaping save in the 50th minute to deflect a Dinos shot way.

The fourth-year goalie made five saves in the loss.

“When a keeper makes a good save like that it just sparks everybody to get going,” said Singh. “I think that was a fantastic performance by Erin. The third goal was a great goal, you can’t take that away from Calgary, but Erin played fantastic.”

Singh also noted his team’s late push even after Calgary went up 3-1.

“The last seven or eight minutes our girls had another spark and we came out and tried to push to get a second goal. It didn’t quite happen. But it shows the fight we have moments we can take and go forward. That’s all I can from them. They (Dinos) were number one in the country a couple weeks ago and the majority of those players were in the final in 2019. So there’s a lot of experience with Calgary and this is good for us to be able to play against a team like this for us to develop and learn and build from that.”

The Horns are back home for a pair of games over the Thanksgiving weekend when the Alberta Pandas (3-5) pay a visit to the U of L Stadium Saturday and Sunday.

Follow @@DWoodardHerald on Twitter

Comments are closed.