Arizona State women’s soccer defeated Colorado College 3-0 Friday night to wrap up non-conference play and boost their record to 5-1-3. It was graduate student defender Lieske Carleer who scored the exclamation point third goal, her first of the season.
Born in Winterswijk, Netherlands, Carleer enters her fifth season with the Sun Devils and has started in all but one of the 64 games in her collegiate career.
ASU and the Netherlands native showed aggressiveness and hunger in the second half, as Carleer had three shot attempts throughout the game and played the whole 90 minutes. In the 75th minute, ASU drove down the field getting close to Colorado College’s goal, Carleer shot toward the goal but it was saved.
That did not stop the Devils as sophomore midfield/forward Enasia Colon assisted the ball back to Carleer who scored the third goal of the night.
“As a team, really strong and organized, putting our bodies on the line to defend our own box, and really pleased with how little goals we’ve conceded,” Carleer said. “I think we’ve conceded three goals this entire season so far, so that is great to build off from there. Defense wins games.”
Carleer’s confidence entering the game was an important factor in her performance.
“I felt great today, the team warm-up was good and we were feeling ready to go,” Carleer said. “We knew what spaces they had that we could exploit and one of them was they are manmarkers at heart. So if you’re dribbling, if the spaces open up and they don’t step, we take our space.”
Another strong aspect of ASU’s performance was the ability for good defense to transition into offense.
“Defense is where it starts and preseason we focused like ‘We gotta get clean sheets,’ because from there on, you can always create opportunities and win the game,” Carleer said.
Carleer and the Sun Devils now face an eleven-game conference schedule which concludes at the beginning of November with a trip to Tucson to face rival UArizona.
“I think [Friday] was a great team performance,” Carleer said. “We all worked really hard on those basics, on getting the basics down and working from there and we can work from there every game in the Pac”.
Arizona State begins the conference schedule next Friday as the visiting Oregon State Beavers come to Sun Devil Soccer Stadium for a match at 7 p.m.
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