CHENEY, Wash. – The Eastern Washington University women's soccer team defeated Fairleigh Dickinson 3-2 today (Sept. 17) in its fourth straight home match. With this victory, EWU improves to 6-4-0 on the year and goes 2-0 on the weekend while FDU falls to 2-7-1.

The first goal of the game came in the 17th minute of the first half by Fairleigh Dickinson with a goal from Sofia Albertsson following a deflection off the goalkeepers shot into an empty net, making it 1-0 in favor of FDU.

The Eagles responded in the 18th minute when senior Chloe Williams scored a goal after taking a pass from Savannah Hoekstra and notched a shot from inside the box into the upper corner of the net, tying it at 1-1. With the goal, Williams broke the Big Sky record in career points improving the 89. The previous record was held by Idaho State's Amanda Ellsworth (2011-14) with 87.

"We had an unfortunate mistake to start the game, but I was proud of how we responded and scored right away and then again before halftime. We've had a habit of settling in and we talked at halftime about going out and getting a third goal to put them away a little bit, but unfortunately we gave up a goal off of a set piece," said head coach Chad Bodnar. "We have things to work on, but we are going to look at the result and look at how we dug and scored late and take positives away from today. It's always a great thing to get two more wins before the start of conference play."

Less than two minutes later, Williams scored another goal for the Eagles with a shot from the top of the box, giving Eastern the lead 2-1 and improving her career points to 91. With her 36th career goal, she is now tied for second place in the Big Sky for all-time career goals.

In the 28th minute, senior M'Kenna Hayes took a shot on goal but goalkeeper Amanda Fitzgerald came up with the save. Going into the half, EWU was leading 2-1 while also outshooting FDU 7-3.

Williams opened up the half with two shots on goal within the first three minutes, but could not score off the opportunity.

In the 60th minute, Fairleigh Dickinson responded with a goal from Elma Kolenovic that followed a set piece from 35 yards out with an assist from Dara Battistoni, tying the game at 2-2.

Williams took another shot on goal in the 63rd minute, but there was another save by Fitzgerald in net.

In the 86th minute, Devan Talley scored a goal after taking a pass from Delaney Romero and beat the defenders to the goal to put the Eagles back in the lead by a score of 3-2, which ended up being the final score of the contest.

Senior Emily Busselman was in net for EWU and recorded two saves while improving her record to 4-1-0. Fitzgerald took the loss in net for FDU with six saves while her record falls to 1-6-1.

Win-Loss Record
Eastern Washington moves to 6-4-0 on the year, while FDU falls 2-7-1. This was the first contest between the two teams, putting EWU 1-0 in their series record. The Eagles are now 5-1 at home on the year with three matches remaining in the home stand.

What it Means 
This is Eastern's first game and victory against a team from New Jersey. The Eagles are now 1-1-0 overall against teams from the Northeast Conference as they faced Robert Morris on Aug. 21, 2011.

Keys to the Game
Eastern Washington responded quickly to FDU's first goal with scoring a goal about a minute afterwards.

The Eagles were able to hold Fairleigh Dickinson to six shots a game, when they usually average 12.6.

EWU outshot FDU 16-6 with seven different student athletes taking shots.

Top Performers
Chloe Williams scored two of the three goals for EWU while also leading the team in shots, taking eight and six of those on goal.

Devan Talley scored the winning goal for the Eagles in the 86th minute.

Six different Eagles played the whole 90 minutes including goalkeeper Emily Busselman, Jenny Chavez, M'Kenna Hayes, Maia Inniss, Grace Klinkenberg and Lexi Klinkenberg.

Notables
Chloe Williams scored two goals during the contest for Eastern. With her first goal, Williams broke the Big Sky record in career points with 89. The previous record holder was Amanda Ellsworth from Idaho State (2011-14) who had 87.

This win puts coach Chad Bodnar's career home record to 23-7-5 since he took over in 2014.

The Eagles have been able to outshoot their opponent in every game so far this year.

Bodnar Bites
On bouncing back from the early goal: "It's always important, it shows the character of the group. This group has gone through some stuff early in the season, but they've continued to dig and work hard. Getting Chloe going again is always going to be a huge benefit because she's such a good player. I think she was in a little bit of a rut early on this season, but this is a good time to get healthy."

On Devan's Gamewinner: "We shifted Devan up top to see how that looked for us and to change a couple of things going into next week. Delaney read a short goal kick that they had been doing all day and we were ready for the short ball. Fortunately, Delaney played a great ball to Devan and she had a very composed shot in the moment we needed it the most."

On Chloe's Record: "She doesn't pay attention to the records, and honestly she's a kid that doesn't care about that stuff. She cares about helping her team win, not about the individual things. That's a credit to her because she's a great kid, she always works hard. Everything she's done she's earned and her teammates have set her up for a lot of those goals and putting her in situations to score those goals. Hopefully, this gets her going for conference play because we're a good team, but she helps us tremendously when she's going the way she should be going."

On Conference Play Next Week: "We start off with two tough teams here at home and each game is going to present its own set of challenges. This conference is becoming a better and better soccer conference, so we know we want to be on the right foot going into conference play. We wanted to get our momentum going because we've been back and forth this nonleague slate. We've gone through tough things as a team and hopefully this gets us going in the right direction."

What's Next
The Eagles continue their home streak as they take on Sacramento State this Friday, Sept. 22 at 3 p.m. This marks the first Big Sky Conference game of the season. EWU will continue BSC competition with Northern Arizona on the following Sunday, Sept. 24 and Southern Utah on Oct. 1.