Sophomore Delaney Bittner scored the only two goals of the game for Shepherd’s women’s soccer team. She had a 100% shooting average on Saturday’s match (10/15/22) against East Stroudsburg University. Having only taken two shots the entirety of the game and scored both, she gave Shepherd a victory over the Warriors. The final score was 2-1 Shepherd.
Bittner is no rookie to the Shepherd women’s soccer team. In her freshman year alone, she appeared and started in fifteen games, had the second highest number of goals on the team, with a total of five goals, three assists, and played for 1,230 minutes. Even though her sophomore season is not completed yet, she already has reached her freshman year best. With two weeks still left in the season, she has scored five goals already and has played a total of 1,191 minutes.
Bittner started the game off strong. She scored the first goal within the first three minutes of the game. She was determined to score because she said it was her goal to score against every team in the conference, in which East Stroudsburg was one of the teams she had yet to score against.
When asked how she felt after the first goal, Delaney, being the team player that she is, accredited her fellow teammate Aly Nazarok, with making an “unselfish run” up the field to allow her the space to score the goal in the first place. “It came right off the practice field” she stated. Captain Sara Hohn assisted Delaney on her goal and said, “It always feels good playing the ball to Delaney. I can always count on her to finish”.
The first half left Shepherd with a 1-0 advantage. Assistant Coach Sam Greene loves scoring first. “Statistically speaking we mostly always have a good outcome when we are the first to score”, he said.
However, it wasn’t long after the second half’s kickoff when East Stroudsburg’s Caitlin Nichols scored, tying up the game at one all. The game remained tied for over twenty-five minutes, until “Big-Time Bittner” (as she’s known) received the ball at the halfway line and dribbled it all the way down to the corner flag. Bittner shot the ball just outside of the eighteen-yard box and magically curved it over East Stroudsburg’s keeper, Emmy Clarkson, and just inside the goal post giving Shepherd the 2-1 lead.
After scoring unassisted, Bittner casually shrugged and walked it off as her teammates ran to her side to celebrate. When asked why she shrugged it off she admitted, “I didn’t mean to score, but a goal is a goal”. Coach Greene made the remark that “Delaney scored two great goals, but she was persistent through her hard work rate throughout the whole game, and she made it difficult for the other team”.
The Shepherd University Rams fell 2-0 against second-ranked West Chester on Oct. 19, but they rebounded to beat Mansfield 2-0 on Senior Day, Saturday, Oct. 22. Bittner again scored, on a pass from Nazarok.
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