Thursday night at the opening of Demirjian Park was electric as the sounds of chants, bucket banging and vuvuzelas were going off. Although Illinois sparked early, it wasn’t enough to beat North Carolina. 

“We’ve certainly have had games that excited the crowd, but you could never feel the crowd like you could tonight,” said head coach Janet Ryafield when talking about the atmosphere of the game. “You couldn’t hear the hot shots walking up while we’re warming up, walking down the sidelines, sidewalk beating their drums, you couldn’t hear the drums in the stand cheering and just feel that energy.” 

Illinois were riding in the driver’s seat after their first two games on the road saw nine goals scored and Hope Breslin scoring a hat trick in the last game against Illinois State University.

Breslin’s momentum and energy from the first two games carried over in Champaign as she opened the game in the third minute with a goal. 

After catching the Tar Heel backline off guard and applying a hard pressure a mistake happened and the ball landed at Breslin’s feet. After noticing the goalkeeper off her line she whacked it from outside of the box and sailed it right into the net to give them the lead. 

However the lead was short lived because one minute later a long pass to Tar Heel Emily Murphy put her clear on goal and she slotted it right past Julia Cili to tie it all up. 

Although Illinois tried to fight their way to get the lead back, North Carolina was just the stronger team on the field and started to dominate. Play after play, shot after shot in Illinois’ defensive third put Cili and the backline to work. 

In the 18th minute a free kick from North Carolina was driven deep in Illinois’ 18-yard box and Maycee Bell beat Eileen Murphy and Sydney Stephens in the air. The header was floating toward the corner of the goal, but Cili fully extended to make the save to deny a goal. 

By the 27th minute, Bell found her breakthrough and was able to get the ball past Cili to give them the lead. 

Eight minutes later the Tar Heels grabbed another goal with a header from Rachael Dorwart to extend the scoreline 3-1. 

In the second half North Carolina was not done yet as they scored two more goals in the 46th and 52nd minute with both from Emily Colton. 

Although the 5-1 loss might burn a harsh memory into the players, Rayfield’s motto is “to get better everyday” and this game is just another way of doing just that. Learning from mistakes tonight can help Illinois in the long run once they look to compete in the Big Ten and further, a spot in the Big Ten tournament.

“I told them we had two goals tonight, one was to open this place and let people see what an amazing opportunity it is to see great college soccer and to celebrate that with the alumni and the second was to make sure we got better tonight,” Rayfield said about the post-game talk. “Whether we lost or won tonight was not going to be as important as whether if we’re ready to play in November and December and ready for a challenging Big Ten season and I think we accomplished that tonight.”  

Coming up next for Illinois will be Butler at Demirjian Park once again to wrap up the second week of college soccer.

@AngelleCortes

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