MANSFIELD, Conn. -- The start of first-year forward
Emily McKelvey's career with Eastern Connecticut State University Women's Soccer has been nothing short of stellar as the Lebanon, Connecticut native tacked on two more goals for the Warriors in a dominant 2-0 home-opening win at Rick McCarthy Field on Friday afternoon against Mount Holyoke College.
The win was Eastern's first against the Lyons in the all-time series, which spanned three matches after today, as McKelvey now has four goals in her first two career matches, totaling only 111 minutes, and today had 11 shots overall as part of a 53-shot onslaught by the Warrior offense, 19 shots of which made it on net.
In what was a wire-to-wire victory for the Warriors, they outshot Mount Holyoke by a 53-3 margin and a 19-3 edge in shots on goal, seeing 10 players recording multi-shot matches. Junior goalkeeper Alex Igantowicz faced just three shots on goal across her 90 minutes of action, stopping all of them, as she maintains a perfect save percentage through two games played this year, making six total saves in 153:33 of action.
Similar to the match against St. Joseph's (LI), McKelvey found the back of the net early for Eastern with a left-side score against senior goalkeeper Emma Zoubok just before five minutes had passed in the first half. McKelvey's goal came after a shot from senior defender
Arianna Tomassi that was saved by Zoubok and ricocheted to the foot of the first-year forward to give the Warriors an early 1-0 edge.
Just over 12 minutes later, McKelvey would do it again as, after an initial corner kick, her shot attempt would be blocked in front before finding her foot again for a high-riser by Zoubak, proving to be the only two goals that Eastern needed to come away with the win. In all, the Warriors had 17 first-half shots, five of which Zoubak saved as part of a nine-save effort before she left the match in the 58th minute.
In her place was first-year goalkeeper Anya Johnson, who made eight stops in the final 32:05, while McKelvey continued to vie for the hat trick, narrowly missing it on several occasions, including once off the crossbar in the 75th minute. The entire second half for Eastern saw them rattle off 36 shots, while the defense of graduate student
Kylie Gentile, seniors Tomassi,
Lindsey Rowe,
Abby Kearns, juniors
Claire Elliott,
Tori Babineau,
Adeline Stevens,
Elise Leccese, and first-year
Samantha daSilva held down the Lyons in check for the full 90 minutes.
With the win, Eastern is off to their first 2-0-0 start since the 2021 season, as they will look to move to 3-0-0 when they take on Mitchell College on Monday afternoon at 12:00 PM on the road. That will be the first matchup between the two programs since the 2021 season, when the Warriors came out on top against the Mariners in New London, Connecticut, by a 2-0 final.
