ITHACA, N.Y. — Senior midfielder
Emily Gibbons converted a penalty kick 54 seconds into the match, and the Cornell women's soccer team (4-3-2, 1-0-0 Ivy) made the early goal stand in a 1-0 victory over Yale (5-5-0, 0-1-0 Ivy) in the Ivy League opener for both teams Saturday afternoon at a blustery Berman Field.
Playing on Alumnae Weekend, the Big Red earned its first Ivy League-opening win since 2021, and freshman goalkeeper
Sofia Kerrigan made two saves for her fifth clean sheet of the season, tying Sherrie Chocola for the third-most by a freshman goalkeeper in program history.
"Great win, thoroughly deserved win," said Cornell head coach
Rob Ferguson. "We did pretty much everything that we wanted to do in the game plan. [We] caused them a lot of problems offensively and created a lot of chances. Obviously, we would have liked to score more goals. We've got to find ways to make it more comfortable for ourselves, but [we] defended incredibly well, very well organized in a block and also when we decided to get a bit higher and press them. It's kind of the complete performance, really, minus a few more goals."
The match's only goal came moments after kickoff, when a Yale handball in the box sent Gibbons to the spot. She drove a right-footed shot into the bottom-right corner for her fourth goal of the season. It was the seventh-fastest goal in program history and Cornell's quickest since Maneesha Chitanvis set the program record, scoring 16 seconds into a match at Fordham on Sept. 2, 2011. It also marked the second straight season Cornell scored inside the first minute against Yale, after
Alanna Colbert found the net 58 seconds into last year's 1-0 win at Reese Stadium in New Haven, Conn.
The Big Red outshot the Bulldogs 20-6, including 13-2 after halftime, and put seven shots on goal, but Yale goalkeeper Isabel Willems kept the margin at one with six saves. Sophomore midfielder
Andrea Wilson led Cornell with five shots, two on target, and Gibbons added four. Freshman forward
Sofía Menéndez forced a save toward the top-left corner in the 31st minute, Colbert tested Willems again just over a minute into the second half, and sophomore forward
Jessica Alessi put the Big Red's final shot on frame in the 83rd minute.
"[Offense] may have been the best thing about our game," Ferguson said. "The scoreline doesn't reflect the offensive quality and the problems that we caused them. On another day, we really should score three or four. You've got to give credit where it's due to create that number of high-level chances. When you win a game 1-0, that's a big positive, but we've got to build on it. We've got to find this confidence, this mindset for the goal. Overall, I thought we were terrific with the ball, and we threatened them pretty much all day. Even at the end, at 1-0, it gets a little bit nervy. That's just the nature of the game."
Cornell's defense limited Yale to two shots on goal and held Bulldogs leading scorer Anita Thorvaldsdottir without a shot attempt. Kerrigan stopped JoJo DeNegri's shot in the 44th minute and Hope McMillin's low attempt in the 78th, which was Yale's only shot on target after halftime. Her five shutouts also match Melissa Gambrell for 10th on Cornell's single-season list.
"Really proud of them," Ferguson said. "[Thorvaldsdottir]'s a really good player. She's kind of the single biggest threat on that team, and we had a very different plan for her today versus last year. Last year we basically man-marked her, this year we didn't feel like we needed to. We felt like we had the organization in place to deal with it and the personnel across the team. She really wasn't a massive part of our focus, other than acknowledging who she was and the threat that she had. … Every time she got the ball, we needed to have players around her from both sides. Small-group defending was a big thing for us this week."
Cornell opens a two-match road trip next Saturday, Oct. 3, at Harvard (7-2-1, 1-0-0 Ivy). Kickoff at Jordan Field in Cambridge, Mass., is set for 1 p.m. The Crimson have won six straight, most recently a 4-3 road victory over Princeton on Saturday.
"The goal is to be successful in the Ivy League: get into the tournament, win the Ivy League," Ferguson said. "We're a long, long way from that today. We played a game, we won a game, so we completely reset, rest, recover. … [Harvard has] been a very good team this year, but you know what? It's a very, very good team right here."
