END OF AN ERA

Wednesday, October 7

Costa Mesa, CA

4 p.m.

California Baptist University

Vanguard University (Calif.)

10/8/2009 4:30:00 AM | Women's Soccer

COSTA MESA, Calif. --- For more than a month, the NAIA's No. 1-ranked California Baptist University has been working on an impressive shutout streak, keeping teams scoreless for nearly 900 minutes.

And like all good streaks or a potential no-hitter or perfect game in baseball, nobody involved with the program liked to talk about it. Thus it became the elephant in the room.

On a fall-like Wednesday afternoon, that elephant came to life and went on a rampage.

The NAIA's No. 9-ranked Vanguard broke a scoreless tie and the Lancers' shutout streak with of all things a penalty kick early in the second half that opened the floodgates and led to a 4-1 win over the Lancers.

The loss is the Lancers' first of the season as they fall to 10-1-1 overall, 3-1-0 (9 points) GSAC. The Lions improve to 8-1-0, 3-1-0 (9 points).

“Sometimes it's just not your day,” said CBU Head coach Kristen St. Clair. “We battled through difficult circumstances today.”

Before the game even got into a flow, the Lancers were hit with major adversity when leading scorer Eva Solis went down with an injury less than three minutes in. She didn't return. Then, 11 minutes later, second leading scorer Kylee Nicassio went down with an injury. She didn't return either, and suddenly the Lancers were up against it.

Even though it was shorthanded and without its top two scorers, CBU battled through the first half, keeping the game scoreless into the intermission.

However, 3:18 into the second half the Lancers' record-breaking shutout streak came to a screeching halt when Gabriela Valles converted a penalty kick to give the Lions a 1-0 lead. It was the first goal the Lancers had allowed since Aug. 27, a span of 897 minutes.

Things got worse four minutes later when Valles beat a charging Emily Evanson from 12 yards out on the left side to make it 2-0, giving the Lions an insurance goal and some breathing room. Twelve minutes after that, the Lions seemingly put the game on ice when Valles struck again on another unassisted goal to complete the hat trick and give the Lions a 3-0 lead with just 25 minutes remaining.

“I don't think losing the streak had anything to do with it,” said St. Clair when referring to the Lions' three goals in 16 minutes. “It was just a difficult conference game at a difficult location, and we had to play through a bunch of adversity against a good team. Over the course of the past month, everyone has given us their best shot, and we got hit by Vanguard's today. That is a good team.”

Down 3-0, the Lancers were finally able to get on the board when Fabiola Zanella da Silva converted a penalty kick in the 67th minute to make it 3-1.

Vanguard's Amanda Couch completed the scoring with a 20-yard free kick from the left side in the 86th minute.

“We did have some nice rhythm at times, but this is just a hard surface to play on and settle the ball,” said St. Clair. “We worked hard and played well, and I don't think the score is indicative of that.”

The Lions out-shot the Lancers, 11-6. It was the first time the Lancers had been out-shot this season.

“Just like we talked about after the Lee and Concordia games, one game does not make or break your season,” said St. Clair. “We'll pick ourselves back up and go back to work tomorrow. This will be a great character building experience, and we're about to learn who we are. The girls are upset, which they should be, but we won't dwell on this. It just wasn't our day.”