The rough start for Missouri Southern women’s soccer seems to be smoothing out as they have strung together four straight wins. The season had exclusively brought hard times for the Lions, as their record heading into the month of October was 0-7-1 [0-1 in MIAA]. 

Once the calendar turned to October, the Lions seemed to have become a whole new team. Southern started the month off with its first win of the season, on the road, against conference opponent Emporia State University. 

From there, the Lions traveled to another MIAA team in Southwest Baptist. The Lions added another win to their record by beating the Bearcats.  

The Lions notched another win by beating the Tigers of Fort Hays State, the team’s third straight win, all in conference play. With a three-game win streak on the line, the Lions hit the road to take on conference foe Washburn University on Tuesday of this week, where they captured yet another conference win, improving their overall record to 4-7-1 [4-1 in MIAA.] 

“Conference is what really matters at this point,” Head Coach Alese Woolard said. “How we do in conference determines how far we can go. The winner of the conference tournament gets an automatic bid to the National Tournament, so in this conference, that could be any team.”

Junior Cortney Sanders put the Lions out front with a headed goal from a corner kick early in the Lions’ last game. Southern’s defense clamped down and sealed the victory.

The defense stood tall in the second half, shutting out the Lady Blues while adding another goal by junior Megan Stueve in minute 15 to seal the Lions’ 2-0 win. 

“We are finally starting to connect on the opportunities that we are creating,” Woolard said. “We’ve had a number of chances in our games early in the season and just were not able to finish.  Now our timing is a little better, we are meshing, and we have had a little success.” 

The Lions will be back in action tomorrow as they play another conference game against the Griffons of Missouri Western.