Senior midfielder Taylor Callan curled a corner kick into the goal in the seventh minute of overtime to give Westmont Women's Soccer (2-4-1, 1-0 GSAC) a much needed 2-1 victory over #19 Vanguard. It was the first loss of the year for the Lions who fell to 5-1-1 overall and 0-1 in conference play. For Westmont the victory broke a three game losing streak – all of which were by one goal.

"This is a huge turning point for us," said Callan. "It's the first game of the (GSAC) season and our first win in a long time. We needed this one very badly. Pulling off (the win) means a complete new path for us. Regardless of points (in the standings) or anything else, this is a huge morale booster and confidence booster. It is exactly what we needed."

After nearly 75 minutes of scoreless ball, the Lions took a 1-0 lead on a goal by Danielle Dintino. Ivana Mendez passed a through ball to Dintino from near midfield on the right-hand side and Dintino found herself one-on-one with Westmont's keeper Roxanne Love. Dintino's shot cleared Love's reach and landed in the upper right hand corner of the net.

Ten minutes later, senior Amy Lawson recorded the equalizer for the Warriors.

"I saw a ball coming in from Jess (Zuehlsdorf) on the right flank," recalled Lawson. "I knew that it was over me and I thought that if I could just watch the defender and her eyes as it was coming over my head, I would see were it landed. I was able to get to it right as it bounced before she could. I pushed it to the side and there was a little scuffle. I knew I had time to take a touch, stop and just hit it in the bottom right corner.

"Even when we were down a goal the energy didn't drop off," noted Lawson. "Then when we got the tying goal, we definitely had the momentum and knew we could go for it the next five minutes and into overtime. Vanguard's bench only had four subs today and they were just dying. One of the players was apologizing to her teammate saying, 'I'm sorry, I can't jump anymore because I think I might pull my leg.' So I thought, 'play me the ball next to her.' We used our chatter and energy from all the women on the bench to lift us and keep us going the whole time."

"To have the losses that we've had, and then go down one goal – that was a serious character moment to come back and tie that game," said head coach Dave Wolf. "Even a point (in the GSAC standings for a tie) would have been great. I would have taken a point.

"I thought the longer the game went, the better we got," continued Wolf. "Toward the later stages of regulation I thought we played some good stuff. We really had to work hard to get there. Amy did a beautiful job of in the second half of playing exactly how we asked her to play at halftime. But she didn't get as much service as she would have liked. Frankly, it was because the passing of the ball in other parts of the field wasn't good enough to get the ball to her. But when we were good enough to get the ball to her, she was very productive in what she was giving us.

"There were other players that I thought began to help the team (in the second half)," said Wolf. "Shanae (Coker) began to help the team and Bailey (Esquivel) did a good job coming off the bench. Melanie (Green) worked her way into it late."

"As a team, our journey is just beginning," said Lawson. "The verse our team uses in Romans talks about how suffering creates perseverance and perseverance hope. For us, we've had our suffering – we had three really hard losses and two overtime loses that just killed us. But we kept persevering, and we got our hope and we are not disappointed anymore."

The Warriors will continue their journey on Wednesday when they travel to Santa Clarita to take on the Mustangs of The Master's College (6-2, 1-0 GSAC). Game time is at 4:00 p.m.