DAVENPORT, Iowa – The Western Illinois women’s soccer team defeated St. Ambrose (6-1-0) by a 3-1 score,Sunday, Sept. 20.

Jill Kevorkian got the Fighting Leathernecks (2-3-1) off to a quick start when she took a crossing pass from Miranda Graham and knocked home a shot from the top of the six yard box to give Western a 1-0 lead in the 2nd minute of the match.

“It was really important for us to get off to a quick start and put the ball in the net early,” Western Illinois head coach Tony Guinn said. “We’ve struggled offensively our last three games so breaking out of the scoring slump was huge for us.”

Western would add to its lead just minutes later when Courtney Bresnahan took a long pass from Caitlin Barrett and put a chip shot in over the left shoulder of St. Ambrose goalkeeper Lauren Gunawan to give the Leathernecks a 2-0 lead at the five minute mark.

The Leathernecks would strike again just three minutes later when Kevorkian took another pass from Graham and knocked in her second goal of the day to give Western a 3-0 lead.

“It felt really good to score twice today,” Kevorkian said. “I’ve never done that before so for me personally it was huge.”

“I felt like even though they were bigger than us, we had a little more speed and it paid off on those early goals.

The mach would remain scoreless through the rest of the first half and well into the second half when St. Ambrose freshman Ashley Dexter took a shot that hit off the right post and bounced in to cut the Western lead to 3-1 in the 86th minute.

“St. Ambrose played hard the entire match,” Guinn said. “They are a really good, tough team and they are coached extremely well.”

The victory by the Leathernecks snapped a three-game winless streak and also marks just the second time this season that the team has scored more than one goal.

“This is a really good building block for us headed in to our next match,” Guinn said. “We play Eastern Illinois next and they are a really good team so we’ll need to keep up the offensive output.”

Statistics were not available immediately following the match.

Western Illinois will travel to Charleston, Ill. to take on Eastern Illinois at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24 before returning home to face Grand View at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26.