DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The Embry-Riddle (3-1) women's soccer team suffered its first loss of the 2015 season on Sunday, falling 2-1 to Stetson (5-3) in the Eagles' home opener at ERAU Soccer Stadium. Sunday's match was the Eagles' final tune-up before they attack a very challenging Sunshine State Conference schedule, starting with a road game against NCAA II No. 1 Rollins at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
 
"I want to congratulate Stetson on the win," ERAU Head Coach Samantha Bohon said. "Manoj [Khettry] wasn't here and I just want to let him know that we're thinking about him and wish him all the best.
 
"This was a frustrating performance for me because we made more mistakes tonight than we have all season. And even still, we had opportunities to score. Stetson's defense did well to make our final pass a difficult one, and we have to do a much better job of working to find a seam in the box."
 
Stetson surged ahead at the nine-minute mark when Riana Metzger got in behind the Eagle defense. ERAU goalkeeper Olivia Lynch came off her line and got a touch to the ball, but it wasn't enough to stop Metzger who capitalized on the open net to put Stetson up 1-0 .
 
Just five minutes later, the Hatters sent the ball out over the end line for and Eagle corner kick. Katherine Ebbs sent the ball into the box and it took a couple of deflections before falling to Emmie Johansson who tapped the ball into the back of the net for her first goal of the season to knot the score at 1-1
 
Froshaug had another chance at a goal in the 24th minute when she picked off a pass after a stumble by the Hatters' last defender. Froshaug caught Stetson goalkeeper Kahri Smith off her line, but her shot whistled past the right side of the goal to keep the score at 1-1.
 
In the 40^th minute, the officials ruled that a foul by Embry-Riddle was committed inside the penalty area, giving the Hatters a penalty kick. Mara Keomanivane successfully converted on the free kick to reclaim the one-goal advantage for the Hatters at the half.
 
Neither team was able to get into much of a rhythm in the second frame. Both teams were close in shots, with the Eagles holding a slight 6-5, but the Blue and Gold dominated the visitors 6-2 in the half and 13-3 in the game in corner kicks. While the Eagles' lone goal came was the result of a corner, and many of their most dangerous chances of the half came from the set piece, the Eagles were unable to capitalize on any of those opportunities.
 
In the final minute of play, the Eagles won their 13^th corner kick of the night. The ball eventually fell to Guro Naesse Berge, but the freshman was unable to score the equalizer as her attempt sailed just over the cross bar.
 
"Tonight we had good news and bad news," Bohon added. "The bad news is we made some mistakes and didn't get the win. The good news is that both of their goals were avoidable and resulted from mistakes that we made, and that's good news because it's still early in the season and hopefully we can correct them and not make those same mistakes later on. I don't want to take anything away from Stetson, because obviously they capitalized on our mistakes.
 
"We've got a great test away at Rollins who was the national runner-up last year. We have to pull up our bootstraps and recover, and get ready for a battle on Wednesday."