Late in the second overtime period of a game that remained scoreless through the first 90 minutes of play, junior forward Kayla Addison fired a shot into the upper right corner of the net to give the Grand Valley State University women’s soccer team a 1-0 victory against visiting Saginaw Valley State University Sunday.

The goal was Addison’s second this season and GVSU’s third in three games.

Though GVSU (1-0-2) dominated in the attacking third of the pitch, outshooting the Cardinals (2-2) 26-to-5, the goal posts and the Cardinal defense denied several opportunities for the Lakers.

Junior forward Maria Brown found space late in the first half and fired a shot from outside the 18 yard line that hit the crossbar and bounced down into the hands of Saginaw Valley freshman goalkeeper Laura Ivezaj.

In the second half, Addison almost scored on a breakaway, but Ivezaj deflected her shot, and Cardinal defenders cleared the ball.

“It’s very frustrating seeing how we get so many more shots than other teams and we can’t finish them,” Addison said.

Junior forward Ashley Botts, who had 4 shots on goal in the Laker win, said the team is a bit frustrated with its play despite picking up the victory.

“We’re pleased with the win, but we’re a little frustrated with the way it came about,” she said. “This is our third game that went into overtime, so hopefully we can pick it up and finish the ball a little better.”

The victory comes on the heels of a pair of 1-1 tie games in non-conference action last week. Such results could be seen as a relatively shakey start when compared to last season’s success, which yielded one-loss regular season, seven straight shutout victories in postseason action and a second-consecutive national championship.

GVSU head coach Dave Dilanni said last year’s success plays a part in the frustration so far this season.

“There are holes popping in the boat – we patch a hole and then another hole pops,” he said. “Today’s hole was that we were just not finishing. We haven’t scored a lot of goals, which is a little frustrating in the sense that we bring everybody back but one player in the midfield and in the front line, but we’re going to work on that.”

Delanni said he was satisfied with his defense in getting a clean sheet and in his teams passing game to set up goal scoring chances.

“One thing that we worked on in this week prior to the game was creating those opportunities and we created them today, but we just didn’t score,” Dilanni said. “We just need to minimize those holes popping in the boat.”

GVSU will continue its three-game home stretch Friday against Michigan Technological University at 7 p.m.

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