In a season of highs and lows, the Fordham women’s soccer team ultimately ended their year on a low note.

The Rams were ousted in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 Championship on the road this past Sunday to the UMass Minutewomen, 4–0. They ended the regular season by downing the Davidson Wildcats in overtime and clinched this highly-anticipated matchup with the Minutewomen. 

The game seemed like it would be a close one at the conclusion of the first half. Neither team scored in the first 45 minutes, however UMass did have an advantage on the offensive side of the ball. They outshot Fordham 10–2 and had four corner kick opportunities compared to none for the Rams. 

Everything started to unravel in the second half and Fordham seemed to have no answer to stop the bleeding. The A-10 leading goal scorer, Lauren Bonavita, got the party started for UMass in the 51st minute. Ansley Frazier passed the ball to teammate Jenny Hipp off a corner and then sent a cross into the box for Bonavita. Bonavita played the ball off the bounce and sent a strike right past Rams goalie Kelly LaMorte for the 1–0 lead. The goal by Bonavita extended her goal streak to five games in a row and gave her 11 goals for the season. 

It only took UMass three minutes to extend their lead to 2–0. In the 54th minute, Frazier and Hipp did the same play off the corner, but this time Hipp passed the ball at the top of the box to Ava Jouvenel. Jouvenel took a shot in between a bunch of Ram and Minutewomen players that snuck its way by LaMorte without her moving an inch. 

It seemed to work two times, so the Minutewomen ran the same corner play in the 57th minute with Frazier and Hipp a third time. Hipp received the pass from Frazier off the corner and sent a cross into the middle of the box. The ball found the foot of senior Sini Laaksonen who smashed it into the left side of the net for her third goal of the season.

The Minutewomen would add an insurance goal in the 84th minute to put the game on ice. Rebeca Frisk received a long pass on the run from Serena Ahmed and would score on the lone breakaway to increase the Minutewomen lead to four. 

With the loss, the Rams finished the year with a 5-11-4 record, a drop off from their 9-9-1 record a year ago. Fordham did play the hardest out of conference schedule in recent memory and they have a lot of young pieces to work with for years to come. While it wasn’t the finish that both the coaching staff and the players expected, the Rams will be back next year ready to make waves in the conference and try to make it back to the their first A-10 title game since 2015.