The High Point University women’s soccer team opened Big South play with a 1-0 win over Charleston Southern on Thursday night at Vert Stadium. Sophomore Brooke Lisson (Mount Pleasant, S.C./Wando) scored the lone goal of the night to give HPU the win.

“I thought we played well tonight in a great conference battle against an athletic and physical Charleston Southern team,” head coach Marty Beall said. “I was especially pleased with our play in the first half. We kept possession brilliantly and created some good chances. This is great for our team’s confidence after a difficult non-conference season. The girls will feed off this moving forward.”

The win snaps a five-game losing streak for the Panthers and improves their record to 3-7-1 overall and 1-0-0 in the Big South. Charleston Southern falls to 5-4-0 after suffering its first loss since Sept. 2 and now stands at 5-4-0 overall and 0-1-0 in the Big South.

High Point controlled possession throughout the early portion of the game and tested the Lady Buccaneers defense with four shots including a shot from 15-yards out by junior Danielle Schepler (Rochester, N.Y./Greece Athena) that was stopped by CSU’s keeper Caitlin Cody.

The HPU pressure paid off in the 20th minute when Lisson received a ball from sophomore Sammy Vercellino (Crown Point, Ind./Crown Point) 30-yards from net and immediately lofted a shot over Cody and into the net to put the Panthers up 1-0. Lisson caught the CSU keeper off her line and beat her with a ball that dropped just beneath the crossbar for her first score of the season.

In the second half, Charleston Southern possessed more of the ball, but still struggled to breakdown a composed High Point defense. The Lady Buccaneers’ best chance came in the 83rd minute when Allison Lewis found a seam and got behind the HPU defense but her shot was stonewalled by High Point keeper Andrea Ritchie (Winston-Salem, N.C./Mount Tabor) who came off her line to snuff out the one-on-one opportunity.

High Point finished the game with a 14-5 edge in shots and a 7-2 advantage in shots on goal. Ritchie finished with two saves on the night to earn her second shutout of the season and her first since the 0-0 tie against Navy in the season opener.

HPU continues its home stand on Saturday, Oct. 1, when the Panthers welcome Coastal Carolina to Vert Stadium. The two squads are knotted up at 6-6-2 in the all-time series after HPU picked up a 1-0 road win last season on a goal by Jenny Butler (Naperville, Ill./Neuqua Valley). The game is set to kick off at 5 p.m. and is the first game of a High Point soccer doubleheader with the men’s soccer game against Winthrop scheduled to follow.

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