The draw that could change a season: catching up with SJU Women's Soccer

The Big East has been treating the St. John's women's soccer team pretty well this season.

Three games into their league schedule, the Red Storm have notched two victories and one draw, giving up just one goal.

As surprising it may seem though, that one goal and the draw against Marquette this past Thursday, may be one of the biggest games for St. John's this season.

Coming into the game, the Storm had never suffered anything but a loss against Marquette and had yet to even post a single point against the perennial Big East champ.

That all changed this week and, with one single draw, St. John's is riding a brand-new wave of a momentum, sitting in a four-way tie with the Golden Eagles, Georgetown and DePaul for first place in the league standings.

"I thought we battled really hard against a really good Marquette team," said head coach Ian Stone in a statement released by the team. "I thought it was a great game. It could have gone either way and neither team was really playing for the tie, but that's the way it ended up."

Freshman Jesse Schaefer scored her first career goal and the Storm's first goal against Marquette in recent soccer history.

Again, it all doesn't sound that impressive to credit a draw as the potential turning point of a team's season, but this could be the moment that the Storm look back on and decide that this is when it all changed.

Now, it's just a matter of keeping up the momentum.

St. John's has been riding a wave of undeniable rhythm over the past few games and while the Marquette game wasn't a win, per se, the Storm haven't actually flat out lost a game since September 14 at Dartmouth.

In fact, before the Golden Eagles goal on Thursday, St. John's keeper Diana Poulin has extended her shutout streak to 330 minutes.

Three hundred and thirty minutes.

She's made 37 saves this season, recording five shutouts - including two against Big East foes - and currently boasts a save percentage of .698.

Twelve games into their overall schedule, the Storm's offense is also starting to find some consistency and Rachel Daly continues to lead the St. John's front line with a team-high 10 points on five goals.

Of course, that is not to say that this is not a team without things to work on.

St. John's is taking nearly just as many shots per game as opponents (11.8 to 12.5) but the Storm aren't nearly as accurate as they would presumably like to be; or potentially could be. Opposing teams have also recorded 13 more corner kicks than St. John's this fall.

There are plenty of points to work on for this team.

But, more importantly, there have already been things that the Storm has improved on from the beginning of the season to now and, with just six games left on the schedule, including Sunday's homecoming matchup against Butler, St. John's still has time to fine tune its game.

The big thing now is confidence and that's something this team has, in a storm of spades.