Game Summary

WINONA, Minn. — Improvement is the name of the game for the Saint Mary's University women's soccer team this season.

And for the second straight game, the Cardinals' offense has definitely shown signs of that improvement, as the Cardinals' Diane Schirmers (Prior Lake, Minn.) scored her third goal of the season at the 79-minute mark of Saturday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game against Augsburg.

Problem was, the Auggies were nursing a 3-0 lead at the time, as Augsburg handed SMU its sixth straight loss, 3-1 at Ochrymowycz Field.

"Our goal is to make sure that we continue to improve from day to day and game to game," said SMU coach Dan Blank. "And I think today we made another strong step in the right direction. We played a very good game — a game that I felt we controlled for a large portion of the time."

Millie Suk got the Auggies on the board at the 11:23 mark, then netted her second of the game and team-leading fifth of the season 13 minutes later as Augsburg took a 2-0 advantage into the halftime intermission.

"Their two goals in the first half really took the wind out of our sails, because at the time, we were dominating," said Blank, whose team outshot the Auggies 8-5 in the first half. "We had some very good chances, but couldn't convert and they come down and put two by us just like that."

Emily Anderson pushed the Auggies lead to 3-0 midway through the second half, and Schirmers closed out the scoring with her third of the season 12 minutes later.

"It was good to see Diane get that goal," said Blank of his freshman forward. "We struggle so much to score goals last year (managing just two all season), it's good to see us finally getting our offense going a bit."