For the Longwood Lancers women’s soccer team, their non-conference games produced up-and-down results and performances. The Lancers won three of their four opening home matches to begin the campaign while scoring 12 goals in that stretch combined. However, a run of defeats and ties against tougher opponents following the promising start saw results begin to dip as the calendar flipped to September.
The Lancers comfortably dispatched Alabama A&M 4-0 in the season opener on August 14. Longwood brushed past American 2-1 in the next match, and then opened up the floodgates in a 5-3 win over VMI. In the final home game of the stretch, Longwood took an early lead through a Meghan Piazza penalty kick, but UNC Charlotte raced back with three unanswered to hand the Lancers their first loss of 2025.
The UNC Charlotte result was a small setback in the eyes of veteran Longwood women’s soccer coach Todd Dyer. “[Charlotte] are easily the best team we’ve played so far, and that was probably our worst performance,” Dyer said. “Their shape in the first half really had us unsettled and that’s on me.”
The Lancers were buoyed in their promising opening to the season by the emergence of freshman striker Samantha Fischer. She scored four goals in the opening four games, with two goals in the VMI match. She was named Big South freshman of the week on August 26. While the Lancers struggled to consistently score goals in the campaign prior-with no individual player scoring more than two a piece-that issue looked to be fixed in the four game homestand. She added a fifth against High Point in a tight affair that propelled her to top of the Big South in goals.
The cohesion of midfielders and especially the attacking players such as junior Peyton Curney, senior Emma Jones, senior Claire Schultz and senior Madison Fitzpatrick, all played pivotal as teams were simply unable to cope with their forward creativity. As of October 2, the Lancers are second in goals and goal contributions in the Big South. “We’ve been here since the end of July,” said junior central midfielder Coryn Silberstein, “We’ve been together all day, every day…we’ve become really close really fast. I think it’s made the team dynamic really strong this year.” Silberstein has been a key contributor as has started almost every game for the Lancers.
The Lancers headed on the road to take on UMBC and East Tennessee State on August 28 and 31 respectively. The Lancers would lose both games 1-0, continuing the theme of slim losses away from home.
Attention shifted to a big showdown with the then 3-3 Appalachian State Mountaineers. Longwood held a 2-1 lead at halftime through goals from team captain Piazza and freshman midfielder Reece Coggeshall. The pro-Lancer crowd saw the visitors grab two second half goals to push the Mountaineers to victory, 3-2. “Right now we’re playing some of the strongest teams on our schedule”, Dyer said. “We could have won, we could have tied, we could have lost, ultimately there was a 10-minute stretch [in the second half] where the game got wide open.” The Lancers now had four losses, with three of them by one goal. As the season rolled on, it became clear that the Lancers’ style of play was heavy on shots from distance, as the Lancers led the entire conference in total shots attempted throughout September.
Though it had been a while since the Lancers last tasted victory, players remained upbeat about the process and the commitment to learning and improving. “I feel like even after losses we come back stronger,” said sophomore central defender Berni Wayland. “Our team is good this year. We have a lot of talent. It's just about coming together as a team and working together as a team.”
The Lancers battled with Gardner-Webb in the Big South conference opener and through a goal from Wayland on a corner kick, they snapped the lengthy period without a win. In the next match against in-state rivals Radford, the Lancers lost 1-0 as the rain lashed down for almost the full 90 minutes. The Lancers were now left staring at five defeats, with four by one goal.
With a slim road win over High Point, Longwood stands at a 2-1 conference record, a 5-5-2 total record, and 17 goals scored and 14 goals against, heading into the rest of the October Big South matches.
