Despite a shaky start to her season with only one goal of her own this fall, 2022 Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year and junior Corinne Lyght said she can still contribute to the Lehigh women’s soccer team.
Despite Lyght’s high-quality play last year, she is currently not on as high of a goal-scoring pace as she was last season. After the first 14 games, Lyght has scored only one goal but has added two more assists to help the team start 6-4-4.
As a sophomore, Lyght was the first Mountain Hawk since 2005 to earn Offensive Player of the Year honors. She recorded seven goals and started in all 18 games.
Due to Lyght being awarded the honor of Offensive Player of the Year last year, junior midfielder Zoe Schutter and senior forward Ava Schaller said opposing teams are making a more concerted effort to prepare their defense for her and plan to limit her offensive chances.
“I think that teams are paying more attention to our team after last year’s success,” Lyght said. “They have made tactical changes to their game plans which means we have to raise our level of play to counteract the changes, but we are all up for the challenge.”
Schutter has seen the increased defense on Lyght and understands why it’s been more difficult to score as effectively as she did last season.
She said Lyght is getting double-teamed in most games and opponents are respecting her game more.
“She is definitely frustrated at this point, but now that she got her first goal there will definitely be many more to follow,” Schutter said.
Lyght started her soccer career at 4 years old. With her mom playing soccer at the collegiate level at Villanova, she wanted to follow in her footsteps and continue the family’s tradition.
“It’s been a part of my family for a very long time,” Lyght said. “I really loved it a lot and decided I wanted to take it to another level.”
Lyght said her main reason for sticking with the sport for so long is because the sport’s highs outweighed the lows. She believes seeing the hard work, dedication and sacrifice pay off is something she can’t really put into words.
Schaller has seen Lyght’s work over the years and had a feeling she would achieve the honors last year.
“I feel like she was always putting in the work,” Schaller said. “Coming before practices, staying after practices to get extra reps in…I feel like it was a long time coming.”
One of Lyght’s biggest superstitions for this success is she always has to eat the same meal and listen to the same musicians before every game.
“I am very superstitious,” Lyght said. “I have a playlist of Drake and Frank Ocean I always listen to, and then usually have pasta and chicken but always a CLIF bar.”
Following the success from the prior season, Schutter also said the team got much closer and this has allowed them to score a lot more goals and assists.
Currently, six different Mountain Hawks have scored goals for the team, with Ryelle Shuey leading the way with three. A total of 12 players have recorded either a goal or assist so far this season.
Lyght has also noticed this and said the team’s chemistry and players experiencing all-around improvement in their games are major contributors.
She said as the team raises the bar each year, the players have bonded because of the hardship from preseasons, hard trainings and losses.
With the second half of the season underway, Lyght said she is ready to contribute to the team as much as possible, whether that means scoring goals or making the right plays for the team, though these plays may not show up on the stat sheet.
“I think understanding that you can contribute to a team without scoring goals or without the stats on paper is becoming very important to me,” Lyght said.
In the team’s 1-0 victory on Oct. 1 over Army, Lyght was the only goal scorer. Though her team and fans were excited about Lyght netting her first goal, she said her focus is more on recording wins than recording points.
“I just want to keep improving,” Lyght said. “At the end of the day, as long as the team is successful, that’s really all that’s important.”
Lehigh women’s soccer will continue their season at home on Oct. 21 against Loyola.
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