Sophomore goalkeeper Eliza Bennett-Hattan was punching balls, leaping sideways, even catching balls with her legs to protect the Syracuse goal Sunday when the Orange tied No. 22 West Virginia, 1-1, at the Syracuse Soccer Stadium. Bennett-Hattan made nine saves and allowed only one goal in her 110 minutes of play.

The Orange has played two nationally-ranked teams this season, West Virginia and No. 8 Boston College, and between the two games, Bennett-Hattan has only allowed one goal. She shut out BC, which placed her third on the Syracuse all-time shutouts list with 10 career clean sheets. Another solid performance from Bennett-Hattan on Sunday went a long way toward securing a tie for Syracuse.

For most of the game, it looked like Syracuse would have yet another shutout against a ranked team, but in the 77th minute, West Virginia’s Megan Mischler shot the ball over Bennett-Hattan’s head and into the goal.

‘The goal West Virginia scored was not Eliza’s fault; it was a lack of problem-solving on the defense,’ SU head coach Pat Farmer said. ‘You have to have solid goalkeeping to upset a team in the top 25, and she’s done that for us twice now.’

Farmer thought the defense did a good job problem-solving on the field most of the game by getting loose balls out of the box and switching who they were defending based on which player was currently the biggest threat. The defense’s ability to support Bennett-Hattan went a long way toward limiting West Virginia to one goal.

‘We aren’t a very fast back, so we need to be very organized,’ SU defender Danielle Jordan said. ‘We talk to each other very well; we’re good about not letting people get behind us because if the other team got behind us, they would probably beat us to the goal.’

As much as Farmer praised his defense, he saw some areas for improvement and identified mistakes Bennett-Hattan made during the game.

‘Eliza started the game off with a lot of good saves, but then she made some terrible decisions,’ Farmer said. ‘She came out too far away from the goal to get the ball, which could have been deadly. In the second half, her decision making was on the spot and made a lot of really great saves.’

Despite West Virginia’s one goal, the visiting team had 21 shots on goal compared to Syracuse’s eight. Bennett-Hattan made four saves in the first period, compared to West Virginia’s goalkeeper Mallory Beck’s zero.

‘We really came out hard this game and put all our energy onto the field,’ Bennett-Hattan said. ‘I even think we could have even stopped the goal that got through, but we got a little too tired; however, we kept going and pushed through the rest of the game and two overtimes.’

Bennett-Hattan made one of her many saves by jumping in the air and catching the ball with her legs. The crowd came to its feet to applaud Bennett-Hattan for the acrobatic display. Later in the game, she also dove across the goal, landed on the ground and caught another save.

Some of Bennett-Hattan’s tricky saves can be attributed to the drills she does in practice. The goalies practice separately from the team at times to do foot skills, ladder drills, shuffling and balancing on one leg.

‘I’d love to say that I planned catching the ball in between my legs, but I didn’t,’ Bennett-Hattan said. ‘It’s all about knowing where to get in the right spots to make the saves.’

Published on September 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm