WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.- The Palm Beach Atlantic women's soccer team battled back against the Eckerd Tritons but were unable to complete the comeback and fell by a score of 3-2.
Eckerd opened the scoring a little over thirty seconds into the match as the Sailfish had an early defensive breakdown. Jasmine Gallo beat her marker into the box and rolled a shot past Brooke Delzatto for the first goal of the game. The Sailfish settled in and created a few chances from Meren Patton and Anna Foreman in the next few minutes. However, the Tritons doubled their lead in the 19th minute when Jasmine Gallo found Helen Scheer with a long ball over the top of the Sailfish backline. Scheer was all alone and knocked it past the Sailfish keeper with one touch of the ball.
In the 28th minute of action, Aidan McCausland put a ball on frame towards the top right corner. The ball slipped through the fingers of the Triton keeper but she recovered and scooped up the ball before a lurking Maddie Hulme could arrive to clean up the rebound. About three minutes later, Hulme played a pass that made it through a couple defenders in the box and fell right to McCausland. She made no mistake on this one and powered it into the back of the goal to cut the Eckerd lead in half.
The second half started off less eventful than the first. Brecken Slockett and Meren Patton each had a shot on goal but were unable to equalize before the Tritons extended their lead to 3-1 with a goal from Olivia Ozbolt.
14 minutes later, the Sailfish earned a corner. On the corner, Brecken Slockett plays it short to Meren Patton who played a beautiful ball into the box that found the head of Madison Kovar and then the back of the net. The Sailfish found life with under four minutes to play. The Sailfish kept trying to push but Eckerd did a good job of gaining possession and keeping it down in their offensive corner to kill the clock and take a hard-fought conference win.
The Sailfish return to the pitch on Wednesday as they continue their push for an SSC Tournament berth when they head to Boca to take on Lynn at 6 p.m.