JMU women’s soccer falls to UNC-Greensboro, 1-0

The James Madison women’s soccer team dropped a hard-fought 1-0 match Sunday afternoon on the road against UNCG at the UNCG Soccer Stadium.

“It’s a bit of a disappointing result for us,” JMU head coach Dave Lombardo said. “We dominated many aspects of the game but our finishing wasn’t as sharp as it could have been. We missed a few chances, UNCG defended us well and that made those misses costly, they made the best of a chance late in the game and that was all they needed. We’ll regroup this week with conference action starting Friday against Towson.”

With the match scoreless and approaching the final minutes of regulation, UNCG junior forward Chesney White broke through with her seventh goal of the season to put the Spartans up 1-0 in the 80th minute. Rebecca Burrows played a ball to White off a counter and White beat redshirt-senior goalkeeper Kate Courter (Lincoln Park, N.J./Immaculate Heart) to the right side of the net. Courter came on to replace redshirt-junior goalkeeper Ellen Forrest(Midlothian, Va./James River) at halftime between the pipes for the second game in a row.

The shot from White was the only shot on target for the Spartans all afternoon, but it proved to be enough to come away with the victory. The Dukes took 10 shots in the game to UNCG’s four. Four of JMU’s 10 shots were on target.

The Dukes (5-4) had multiple quality chances to break the scoreless draw in the second half. Sophomore defender Jennie Sroba (Manakin-Sabot, Va./Collegiate) had a chance in the penalty area in the 58th minute but UNCG goalkeeper Chloe Buehler made the save. In the 77th minute just before UNCG (4-4-2) broke through, senior forward Katie Hyland (Islip, N.Y./Islip) had a good chance at goal looking for her third score of the season, but Buehler again made the save to keep the Dukes off the scoreboard.

Overall, Hyland took a team-high five shots on goal in 46 minutes of action. No other player took more than one shot in the contest.

Madison’s 10 shots is the smallest total since the Dukes were held to six shots in a 2-1 victory on August 29 in Winston-Salem, N.C. against then-No. 24 Wake Forest, a 2-1 victory.

With the loss, the Dukes fell to 6-8-2 all-time against UNCG.

JMU opens Colonial Athletic Association play next time out, Friday, Sept. 26, on the road against Towson in Towson, Md. Kick between the Dukes and Tigers is set for 3 p.m.