BOX SCORE
NEW LONDON, N.H. – October 26, 2011 – The Castleton State College women's soccer team completed a 9-0 North Atlantic Conference (NAC) regular season after defeating Colby-Sawyer 6-0 on Wednesday afternoon.
The Spartans improve to 14-4 overall and 9-0 in NAC play, which gives them home field advantage throughout the NAC tournament. Colby-Sawyer suffers its first NAC loss of the season and drops to 7-1-1, but has locked up the second best record in the standings. The Chargers are 11-6-1 overall.
Senior Hilary Cooke (Marlborough, Conn.) scored four times to give her a NAC best 16 goals on the season. Senior Courtney Chadburn (North Clarendon, Vt.) assisted on one of Cooke's goals and tied her teammate with her 16th of the season early in the second half. Senior Kelly Gerken (Scottsville, N.Y.) added a goal, which was her first of the season.
The scoring began in the 36th minute when Cooke made a move by the Colby-Sawyer defenders and put home a nice feed from junior Sarah Ethier (Portsmouth, R.I.).
Cooke added her second goal 21 seconds later after a turnover from the Chargers defense. She was running down the left side of the box and was able to sneak the ball to the far corner under the dive of the keeper.
Castleton started the second half off the way they finished the first, with a lot of offensive pressure. Cooke found the back of the net for a hat trick three minutes into the second frame. Chadburn sent a bending ball into the box that Cooke easily headed into the net.
Chadburn, Castleton's leading scorer heading into the game, got into the scoring column in the 57th minute. Goalkeeper Ericka Davis (Cambridge, Vt.) sent a bounding ball over midfield to Chadburn who went the rest of the distance and scored.
Cooke thought she had her fourth goal of the game in the 75 minute, but her shot was deflected by the Chargers keeper. Luckily for Castleton, the ball went directly to Kelly Gerken, who calmly put the ball into an open net.
Less than two minutes later, Cooke did find the back of the net for her fourth tally. After a Colby-Sawyer defensive miscue, Cooke did enough to gather the ball and find the back of the net.
The Spartans outshot Colby-Sawyer 22-6.
Spartans goalie, Ericka Davis (Cambridge, Vt.) earned the clean sheet and made four saves. Colby-Sawyer keeper, Shalyn Spencer (Natick, Mass.) made nine saves in the loss.
The Spartans and Chargers are the top two seeds in the upcoming NAC tournament, which starts on Saturday. The pairings have not been announced.
