Texas State suffers Senior Day loss, awaits fate in league tourney

Texas State’s seniors didn’t end the regular season how they wanted to.

The maroon and gold fell to Louisiana-Monroe on Friday, 3-1, the last home game at Bobcat soccer complex for midfielder Ally Kewish and Hannah Solano and defenders Addison Gaetano and Gabie Jones. Texas State now has to wait for the Sun Belt’s final five matches to conclude to find out where the team will be seeded in the conference tournament.

“It’s just, it’s heartbreaking to lose 3-1 because that’s not what the game looked like,” head coach Kat Conner said. “So it’s heartbreaking but you know what, the seniors play phenomenal and we’re proud of them. And they’re just, they’re all-Americans, really, as people and we’re proud of them. I know that’s their last home game here but we hope that’s not their last game and we hope we keep moving on and moving on.”

ULM scored the first goal of the match in the 19th minute. The Warhawks earned a free kick and sent the ball into the box. Bobcat sophomore goalkeeper Beth Agee deflected the visitors’ first shot, but junior defender Kathryn Yarbrough collected the miss and knocked it into the back of the net.

The hosts kept possession for most of the rest of the half and nearly tied the score up on a shot from freshman forward Zoe Junior that bounced off the crossbar. But the team couldn’t find the back of the net before the buzzer, heading into halftime down 1-0.

“I thought in the first 20 minutes of the first half, we came out a little shy, we weren’t as intense as we probably needed to be,” Conner said. “ULM got a goal off of us and then all of a sudden we started turning up the heat. That’s something that we’ve talked about at practice, that we can’t wait, we’ve got to come out with the intensity from the get-go. So we need to have that focus all the time.”

ULM wasted little time extending its lead, scoring two goals about 90 seconds apart early in the second half to go up 3-0.

Texas State finally answered as Junior stole the ball away from a defender and netted her first goal of the year.

“I thought she played fantastic, I thought she’s really coming along,” Conner said. “She’s a spark plug, her performance has been awesome. You’ve seen it in practice, you see it in the games, she’s really coming along. I think she’s gonna be dynamite for us.”

The Bobcats weren’t able to get past the Warhawks’ keeper again, though, suffering the 3-1 loss.

The maroon and gold are now 7-7-2 overall and 4-5-1 in conference play. They currently sit in fifth place in the Sun Belt standings with 13 conference points, but will drop at least one spot after the end of Sunday’s game between ULM and Louisiana, costing them a first-round bye. Texas State could drop even further depending on the outcomes of the rest of the league’s games.

The Sun Belt tournament seeding will by finalized on Thursday, Oct. 28. The bracket will kick off in Foley, Ala., on Nov. 1. Conner said the team is fortunate to have some time off.

“It’s really vital,” Conner said. “We really have some dings and some injuries and so, it’s gonna make a lot of sense to have a little bit of a week to prepare and then also get some people healthy.”