The women’s soccer team lost both games over the weekend, but those losses seemed miniscule compared to the fact their coach is battling cancer.

The Eagles played these games in honor of second year coach Danny Krispinsky.

“We got bracelets that say pray for coach that we wear all of the time and t-shirts that say ‘No one fights alone,’ that we wore before the game in support for coach,” said sophomore Chandra Hohne.

Friday’s loss against No. 4 Grand  Valley (5-0) was the team’s first loss of 2015. On Sunday, they lost again to Ferris State (1-0). 

The Eagles are now 9-2 overall and 5-2 in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. 

“We weren’t necessarily playing poorly,” said AU head coach Krispinsky. “They just did a great job of capitalizing on a couple of our mistakes and they created a couple of their goals.”

Grand Valley State (11-1, 7-0) got two of its five goals from headers off of corner kicks. 

Gabbie Guibord got the first goal for the Lakers within the first couple minutes of the game. 

From there, the Lakers played in Eagles’ territory and tallied 29 shots.

“They do an excellent job of making you compete with their standard,” said Krispinsky. “It was a great lesson for our young team tonight to compete and see what they do.”

The Eagles came out ready to compete. With more offensive plays in the second half, AU was able to get five shots on goal, with a close attempt by freshman midfielder Lauren Gokey. 

While other great plays were made, the Eagles had trouble finding the back of the net and settled for a shutout.

“Regardless of win, lose or draw tonight, we have to move on from this,” said Krispinsky.

On Sunday, the Eagles tried to brush off their loss on Friday and bring a fresh mindset to compete against another tough opponent, Ferris State.

The game consisted of shot after shot from the Eagles and the Bulldogs, but neither team could find the back of the net. 

“We have to put teams away early,” said junior defender Jess Brown. “We let teams hang around and we’ve had a hard time putting the ball in the back of the net right away.”

It wasn’t until the 57th minute when FSU’s Lindsey Scott stood 25 yards out and chipped the ball over AU goalie Courtney Barker.

Even though the Eagles outshot the Bulldogs 19-9, assistant coach Taylor Clarke believed the Eagles were settling for easy shots instead of taking a challenge.

“We needed to put ourselves in more dangerous positions to capitalize and to get a goal,” said Clarke. “We can’t get comfortable with the half-chances that we were having and we needed to create something more difficult for the [Bulldogs’] keeper.”  

The Eagles maintained possession for most of the game, but Bulldogs’ keeper Maddie Haustein made numerous diving saves to keep the Eagles off the board.

“We out possessed them [Ferris] and I believe we outplayed them,” said assistant coach Brock Kertoy. “But when you don’t create quality chances at goal, finish the chances you had, you let a team stay in the game.”

Even though it was a weekend of losses, the Eagles 

“We are going to move on and ask ourselves how we are going to learn from this,” said Clarke. “What are we going to take from it and how do we move on? What lessons did we learn and how are we going to make ourselves better in the future?”

The Eagles hope to return to their winning streak this weekend as take on Walsh on Friday (5 p.m.) and Lake Erie on Sunday (1 p.m.). 

“I want to come back and put some goals in, like three, four or five, to make up from this weekend,” said Brown. “The biggest thing is to not let these two games define us. Just getting back to the season that we know we can have.”