Photo by Jake Przytarski Marshall’s Grace Gordon fights for possession with St. Peter’s Vanessa Krueger during their game on Saturday. The Tigers fell to the Saints 3-1.

MARSHALL – The last time the Marshall girls soccer team took on the St. Peter Saints it was their season opener and their first game competing at the varsity level, ending in a lopsided 6-0 defeat. Flash forward a month into the season and the Tigers once again took on the Saints, but with a drastically improved result. Though the Tigers fell 3-1, it is the vast improvement that the club has shown in a short amount of time that makes coach Jesus Hernandez proud of his team.

“One of the things I was telling the girls is we made some progress the last time we played this team, and it’s a great team,” said Hernandez. “The score is not what really matters, I think that the effort and the progress we made from last time is what we celebrate.”

Out of the gate, the Saints applied pressure to the Tigers defense as they controlled the ball and threatened to score with a majority of the action taking place in Marshall’s defensive end. Goalie Raini Grams made a nice stop early to keep St. Peter off the board. Shortly after, with seven minutes off the clock, the Saints lined up for a corner kick that was placed perfectly for their attacker to direct it into the net with a header to take an early 1-0 lead.

Less than three minutes later, the Saints would strike again on another corner kick that landed near the foot of an attacker who proceeded to boot the ball past the goalkeeper for a 2-0 lead. Following the goal, St. Peter maintained control of the ball and had the Tigers on their heels inching closer to a third goal nearing the end of the first half. Fortunately for Marshall, however, it was the Tigers who would score their first goal and only goal of the game as Lenei Estrada broke free from the Saints defenders and found an open path to the net where she buried an opportunistic goal that cut the deficit in half just before halftime.

The offensive pressure by the Saints continued when play resumed after the break with Grams stepping up big with saves and her defenders doing great work of limiting the amount of shots taken on net. Coach Hernandez was impressed by the effort shown by the group throughout the contest and the season as a whole.

“They’ve been working so hard every game,” said Hernandez. “I think we’re a defensive team, we have to be, because our attack it becomes weak when we don’t have possession of the ball so our defense really works hard. Some of them don’t even get subbed out because we can’t afford to leave that spot without our starters.”

In spite of the solid defensive performance shown by the Tigers, the Saints would break through once more near the final whistle to make bring the game to its final score of 3-1 in favor of St. Peter.

The Tigers will be right back in action on Monday when they take on Worthington at home in their second to last game of the regular season. Coach Hernandez is hoping to see his players be more vocal in rallying the team the rest of the way.

“I would say one of our things that we been struggling on is leadership on the field,” said Hernandez. “We need the girls to feel that they can talk out there. We call it communication, but I think it’s more than just like communication it’s just more than just saying man on and stuff like that. It’s more like, ‘Let’s go ladies we got this’ you know the leadership has been kind of our weak spot there, but we can definitely improve on that part a lot.”