By Michael Alves
On Oct. 30, the Framingham State Women’s Soccer team fell short 1-0 to the Fitchburg State Falcons in their last regular game of the season.
It was a hard fought game by the FSU Rams, but the team just couldn’t manage to break through the Falcons’ defense.
After the rainy warfare began, not even seven minutes into the match, Fitchburg State sophomore forward/midfielder Maddie Hippert swooped in and scored on a lengthy lead pass from sophomore midfielder Ashley Porter to make it a 1-0 game.
For the remainder of the half, both teams refused to let a single shot go by.
Framingham State fired shot after shot, tallying up nine attempted goals in the first half.
The Rams continued to repeatedly knock, but the Falcons would refuse to answer through the entirety of the second half as well.
Junior goalkeeper Allison Gough continued to suck the life out of the Rams, accumulating an impressive total of nine saves and a shutout victory for the Falcons.
FSU sent 15 total shots on goal throughout the game, with nine of those shots being on net.
Even though the team’s season didn’t end as hoped, Coach Kern said she already looks forward to next season.
Kern said the best memory of the season was “our Mass Maritime game. We came out in the first couple of minutes and scored four goals in the first 24 minutes. I was really proud of the team to come right out of the gate.
“I also think one of our other standout games, even though we lost, was against Worcester,” Kern added. “We battled them the whole time. We came out really strong. We were the underdogs and only lost 1-0. I was really proud of our energy and proud of the team battling against a really good team.”
She said that the goals the team should reach for next year are to “retain the players that we have, to come back strong, and work hard in the offseason. We have a really young team, so I expect that we should do really well next year and get a couple of recruits in.”
Kern added she felt the most crucial improvements the team will need to make next year is having to “replace some solid seniors that are graduating at midfield, and replace some really good players.
“I’m hoping that my underclassmen will step up into those roles, which I’m pretty confident they will,” she said. “I think the improvement to try to build on is our midfield, which is a pretty solid group right now.”
The Rams finish the season with a 5-10-1 overall record and a 3-4 conference record.