The Johnsonian

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Sports

Jodi Kemp was one of six seniors recognized on Senior Day last Saturday. Kemp has two career goal in her Winthrop careeer.

ROCK HILL, S.C. - The Winthrop women's soccer team dropped a hard-fought 2-1 decision to High Point Saturday afternoon at Eagle Field.

"I think this was the worst game I've seen our team play," said. Head Coach Melissa Heinz. "We never found any rhythm. As a team, we were never connected together. I'm kind of stunned. I've never seen these players play this poorly. But, you know, we played poorly, we lost, we deserved to lose. We didn't do anything out there to win so we got what we put in to it."

The loss spoiled Winthrop's chances of capturing its second straight regular season title as it finished 4-3, which was enough for fourth place in the Big South, and 6-7-4 overall. The Lady Panthers improved to 5-2 in conference action and 9-7-2 on the year.

High Point spoiled the events of Senior Day where six Eagles were recognized before the match. They include Jodi Kemp, Kelly Turney, Taylor Kreis, Ashley Bader, Ashley Hallman and Michelle Butler

With a win against Radford, Coastal Carolina clinched the regular season title with High Point (5-2) and Charleston Southern (4-2) still battling for the number two seed. The Lady Bucs will play later on this afternoon against VMI.

The Lady Eagles were led one more time by junior forward Chelsea White, who scored her eight goal of the season. Sophomore defender Stevie Lucas provided the assist on the goal.

Both teams played an even first half creating very few scoring opportunities, but, in the 38th minute, White broke through for Winthrop as she received a 50-yard pass from Lucas, drove the ball into the box and beat the keeper with a right-foot shot.

High Point got the equalizer in the 51st minute of play as Sara Rager found an empty net after a back-pass from Lucas that took junior goalkeeper Dimitra Poulos completely out of the play.

Amy Anzovino would score the winning-goal for the Lady Panthers as she finished off an end line-cross from Rager in the 61st minute of action.

"Now it's tournament time, so we've got to move past this wherever we're put in the conference, I guess we'll end up fourth," Heinz said. "We'll need to see how the rest of the games go. We've got to fix it because we can't go on playing like this into the tournament or we'll be done in the first day. But we're tough, these kids are resilient and I believe that they'll use this to motivate them and come tournament we'll do what we need to do."

Winthrop will now head towards Charleston where it will play in the Big South Tournament against Liberty, which starts next Thursday, Nov. 8.

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