The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s soccer team opened Southern Conference play Friday night with a 1-1 draw against Mercer. The Mocs move to 4-4-2 overall and 0-0-1 in SoCon play while the Bears are 5-3-3 on the year and 0-0-1 against the league.
Mercer’s Abigail Zoeller notched the first goal of the game and her seventh of the year when she picked up a deflection off the crossbar and headed it in on the left side in the 28th minute.
“It was a really hard fought draw,” Chattanooga head coach Gavin McKinney said.
“Mercer’s a tough team. I thought we showed great fight in the game too. We went down 1-nil and I thought we showed great character to get back into the game. I think both teams had some chances to go on and win it.”
Jordan Mueller scored her first goal of the year pushing a corner kick into the net at the 32:49 mark of the match to tie it up 1-nil.
The Bears edged the Mocs 16-15 on shots and had a 9-7 advantage on shots on goal. Chattanooga keeper Ashton Shields continued her unbeaten streak and made eight saves including a stop in overtime when Zoeller made a break and had UTC’s Peyton Moore 1v1 headed to the goal. She took a hard shot that Sheilds jumped in front of for the stop.
“The save in overtime was great,” McKinney said. “I thought Peyton Moore did a really good job tracking her and making her decision difficult on where she was going to finish,”
Masey Fox had a team-high five shots for the Mocs with two on goal. Chloe Arnold had three while Hollie Massey had two. Shields had eight saves.
Zoeller had a game-high six shots with five on goal and the Bears’ goal. Megan Delmonico added three and Payton Schurr had two. Jordyn Ebert and Payton Jamieson shared time in goal. Jamieson had two saves and gave up the Mocs goal. Ebert played the final 65 minutes and had four saves in the match.
The game was delayed before it even started with an undetermined power outage prior to introductions. The game eventually kicked off 32 minutes late and with two overtimes, ended just before the three hour mark.
Chattanooga will host The Citadel Sunday afternoon with a 2:00 p.m. kickoff. Follow the action online at GoMocs.com.