THE MATCHUP

Saint Mary's vs. UM-Morris vs. Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004 Ochrymowycz Field 11:30 a.m.

GAMEDAY PLAYER PROFILE

Kim Rhomberg Year Senior Position Defender Hometown St. Louis, Mo.

For the official GameDay Program for today's game pdf / click here (pdf)

WINONA, Minn. — This wasn’t quite the opener Tony Guinn had in mind.

Guinn, making his collegiate coaching debut Wednesday afternoon when the Saint Mary’s University women’s soccer team took the field against Viterbo, had high hopes for the Cardinals’ season opener.

In fact, after watching his team practice during the preseason, the Cardinals’ first-year head coach had a feeling win No. 1 could very well come in game No. 1.

Unfortunately for Guinn and the Cardinals, someone forgot to tell that to the V-Hawks.

Viterbo’s Jenny Schlesinger scored the game’s only goal five minutes into the second half and V-Hawk goalie Charlotte Large stopped all 11 shots she faced, as Viterbo shut out the Cardinals 1-0.

“It was a tough loss,” admitted Guinn. “I’m a little disappointed for the team, because I thought we played well enough to win. We dominated a good majority of the game — we outshot them, we outplayed them — we just couldn’t put the ball in the net.”

And that lack of scoring punch is something Guinn did not expect from this team.

“We worked hard (in the preseason) at finishing, and we’ve got a number of players who are great goal scorers,” Guinn said. “This was a real learning experience for us — myself included. We started seven freshmen, so we had a lot of people getting their first taste of collegiate soccer.”

A taste that Guinn hopes is much sweeter today, when the Cardinals return to action with a nonconference game against UM-Morris.

“You can’t dwell (on the loss) too long, we need to get over it and get ready (for UM-Morris),” said Guinn. “We’ve only been together for 11 days (of practice) — we’ll keep getting better every day.”