Sept. 7, 2001

Junior Sally Harrison fills in for Debbie Lieberman for this week's edition of What's Up With Women's Soccer. Be sure to read all of Debbie's journal entries from the team's trip to Europe under the "Terps Tour Europe" button on the top right side of the women's soccer webpage on umterps.com

By Sally Harrison

Everyone was excited about the start of the 2001 season. I really think our team is very underestimated, but that is something we will prove throughout the season.

The Towson game was our first game to prove to everyone what we have. Last season we had trouble scoring and really securing the lead. We scored only one goal in the first half. Entering the second half we knew we had put them away and show them that we were the better team. In the second half we did just that by scoring two more goals to end up with a 3-0 lead. After the game, everyone was excited about playing the Duke game. We had proven to ourselves that we were a good team and were ready to prove that against an ACC team.

Before the Duke game everyone was quiet, focusing on what they knew they had to do to help the team win. It was our first ACC game and we needed to show everyone in the country that we were better than what we were ranked.

Before the game, Shannon told us to be excited, that we had nothing to lose and had everything to gain by winning. Kim King scored in the first six minutes which set the tone immediatly.

In the second half, Sara Gustafson scored the secure the lead. After the second goal Duke turned into panic mode, but we were able to hold them off and gain the second shut out of the year.

The win against Duke gave our team confidence that we can win the big time games. Winning these two games is a good start to what is yet to come.