Despite having the better of the match, the Valpo soccer team was unable to overcome a 17^th-minute goal Thursday evening at Brown Field, as Indiana State came away 1-0 victors in both sides' Missouri Valley Conference opener.

How It Happened

• Indiana State scored on its first shot attempt of the game, as Alex Lehnert finished from close range on the break off assists from Mackenzie Kent and Grace Quinn.
• The Beacons outshot the Sycamores 7-1 for the remainder of the half and nearly equalized in the 35^th minute, as off a corner kick, grad transfer Ella Schad (Prairie du Sac, Wis./Sauk Prairie [Coastal Carolina] came flying in from the far sideline and nodded a header off the upper-left corner of the woodwork.
• The match entered halftime with Indiana State holding the 1-0 lead.
• Valpo pushed in its quest to level the match in the final 45 minutes, registering 11 shot attempts, but was unable to find the back of the net.

Inside the Match

• The Beacons lost their MVC opener for the first time since the 2019 season.
• The win was the first for Indiana State over Valpo since October 2019.
• Valpo limited the Sycamores to just seven shot attempts, the lowest total by an opponent since the season-opening win over Chicago State. Freshman goalkeeper Hailey Wade (Fishers, Ind./Hamilton Southeastern) made three saves.
• Meanwhile, the Valpo attack racked up 19 shot attempts on Thursday, the program's most since recording 24 last October against Belmont. Notably, the Beacons were also kept off the board in that fixture.
• ISU goalkeeper Maddie Alexander made six saves.

Thoughts From Coach Marovich

"While we're obviously disappointed that we didn't get a result tonight, there's plenty of positives to take away from our performance. We came out on the front foot, we had 19 shots, we had a lot of really good things happen. Ella's header on the corner was an excellent attempt, we had a service into the box at the start of the second half we just missed at the back post, we had a couple other dangerous services into the six. We won a lot of balls in the midfield as well."

"If you don't move on from a game like today, you don't succeed. You learn from both the good and the bad from the match, and there was so much good that we can't ignore."

"Kate came in and had a great shift tonight. She's really grown into her role with this team as a freshman and had a strong performance today."

Next Up

Valpo (4-5-0, 0-1-0 MVC) remains at home Sunday afternoon as it hosts Drake on Brown Field at 1 p.m.