PORTLAND, Ore.—The Concordia women’s soccer team scored three first-half goals to sprint past the Pacific University Boxers 3-1 on Sunday.

The Cavs opened the scoring early when junior forward Alex Thomas followed her own shot from 10 yards with another from seven after the ball bounced off Pacific junior keeper Brittany Hartmann’s hands. Thomas got the ball initially after junior midfielder Kaylynn Winwood played the ball up to freshman forward Erin Huisingh who sent the ball into the box to Thomas.

Only three minutes later and still in the wake of the first goal, CU’s Winwood put in another in the 17^th minute for a quick 2-0 advantage.

“It makes a big difference when you are able to jump on teams early,” CU head coach Grant Landy said. “We are getting more comfortable in our roles and that showed as we were able to string some nice passes together today.”

This time, Huisingh played the ball back up the right side to Winwood who hit the shot from 25 yards out, grazing the middle of the crossbar on the way in.

The game was still not even a quarter done when the Cavs jumped out 2-0, and they didn’t stop there. With 10 minutes to play in the first half, sophomore midfielder Hannah Kimsey passed the ball up to fellow sophomore midfielder Hayley Hayes who then sent a cross in front of the goal to the feet of sophomore forward Alex Blalock. With Pacific’s keeper still on the right side of the goal, Blalock punched the ball into the bottom left corner of the net for the 3-0 lead.

That score remained until the 54th minute when Pacific played a dangerous ball into the box that Boxers senior forward Bryanna DeLima found and turned into a hard shot on goal. CU junior keeper Tori Talbutt saved the shot, but could not corral it and during the ensuing effort to clear the ball a Concordia defender committed a hand-ball to give Pacific a penalty kick. Pacific’s senior defender Teri Shigeno took the penalty and sent the ball into the bottom right corner of the goal, past Talbutt’s out-stretched hand.

The goal erased what had been a shutout, making it 3-1 with 35 minutes to play.

“For 80 minutes of the game we looked pretty good today. We let our guard down at the beginning of the second half and we ended up paying for it,” Landy said.

Overall, the Cavalier offense dominated throughout the game, outshooting the Boxers 23 to 9 for the game, including 14 to 5 in the first half and 9 to 4 in the second. Of those shots, CU put 13 of them on goal, while Pacific had five shots on goal.

In the Concordia goal, Talbutt saved four shots, while Pacific’s Hartmann saved a whopping 10 in the losing effort. Hartmann also jumped to corral several high crosses into the box to stomp out scoring opportunities for the Cavs in the second half.

The big, early lead let Concordia sub nine players in from their bench to help preserve the team’s legs for tomorrow’s game against Western Oregon.

“We played a lot of people today and hopefully that will help us tomorrow,” Landy said. “Playing back-to-backs are always a challenge, especially in this type of heat, but I told the team these are the types of early season challenges that will make us better and I except them to come out hard tomorrow.”

The win improves Concordia’s overall record to 3-3, while Pacific drops to 3-1. The Boxers now turn their attention to the conference portion of their schedule when they open Northwest Conference play Wednesday, September 14 against George Fox University.

The Cavs, meanwhile, remain out of conference for another three weeks and face NCAA Division II Western Oregon University tomorrow, Monday, at 1 p.m.