NEW LONDON, Conn. – Graduate midfielder Dani Anderson (St. Augustine, Fla.) scored the lone goal for women's soccer against U.S. Coast Guard Academy on Friday night at Nitchman Field as the Beacons fell to the Bears in New London, Connecticut by a final score of 2-1. 

THE BASICS
UMass Boston 1, U.S. Coast Guard Academy 2

UMass Boston (0-1-1)

U.S. Coast Guard Academy (1-0-0)
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
Securing the pass just beyond midfield, Anderson spun around a defender before firing a line drive shot from about 10 yards outside the box. The shot froze sophomore goalkeeper Emily Scharnitzky as it landed just inside the left goal post for a Beacons goal, the seventh of Anderson's three-year career.

The Beacons set the tone early on with two aggressive offensive pushes in the first five minutes leading to a shot by graduate forward Lindsay Bouscaren (Cambridge, Mass.) that was saved by Scharnitzky before senior forward Kaylee Haynes (Bridgewater, Mass.) fired just wide of the open left side less than a minute later.

After scoring her goal, Anderson continued to find quality shot opportunities on the offensive end, recording a team-high four shots (two on goal), with the other two going slightly high and wide of the goal mouth in the opening 45 minutes of play.

A back-and-forth battle to start the second half led to the game-tying goal for Coast Guard, when junior midfielder Sidney Palinkas cross a ball in front of freshman goalkeeper Julia Cote (Baldwinville, Mass.) which Cote punched away before the Beacon defense cleared.

Still threatening in the offensive zone, junior forward Karagan Bulger served a ball in front of Cote who was knocked down by senior forward Anna Carleton as the ball rolled to Palinkas on the left side. Palinkas headed the ball into the net, knotting the game up at one in the 67^th minute.

An onslaught of offense from the Bears came just before the 80^th minute starting with narrowly wide left shot from Bulger. A short while later, Carleton's shot from the middle was stopped by a diving Cote. The best chance of the sequence came from freshman forward Mia Forti whose shot tipped off Cote in the net, rolled around the goal mouth, and was kicked away by the Beacon defense resulting in a corner kick.

Unrelenting, the Bears broke through against Cote when a corner kick deflected off her hands, off the head of Bulger whose shot was deflected by the UMass Boston defense before senior defender Kelly Wade knocked it in, giving Coast Guard the 2-1 lead.

One last quality opportunity would come the Beacons way when Anderson found herself behind the Bears' defense, one-on-one with Scharnitzky. The graduate forward pushed the ball just over the wide-open goal mouth as the Beacons dropped the contest, 2-1.
 
BY THE NUMBERS

• With six shots in the game, Dani Anderson set a career-high for most shots in a single game. Anderson's previous career-high of four was set back on October 22^nd, 2019, against Framingham State, the Florida native recorded three shots on goal, one shy of her career-high set in the same game
• Despite being outshot 17-13, the Beacons were only outshot 6-5 in shots on goal by the Bears
• In the three-game history between both teams, the final score of each game was 2-1 with the first two going the way of UMass Boston (2-1 in head-to-head)

 
WHO'S NEXT
The Beacons finish up their two-game road trip with a neutral site match against Middlebury College on Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 PM. The match will be hosted by Southern New Hampshire University.