What a difference a week makes for coach Chris Hennessey and his quickly maturing Lee University women's soccer team. After dropping a 3-0 contest to GSC leader North Alabama last Sunday evening, the Lady Flames were down but certainly not out.

They rebounded with a critical conference road win at West Georgia on Friday and then put on a sparkling display of soccer in a 4-1 GSC victory over visiting Valdosta State at the Lee Soccer Field on a near-perfect Sunday afternoon.

The two wins moves the Lady Flames back up to the .500 mark (3-3-2) overall, but more importantly to 2-1-0 in the conference. The battling Valdosta team slips to 2-6-0 and 1-3. Lee faces another big road challenge next Friday, traveling to Pensacola, Fla. to face the always talented West Florida club.

The Lady Flames struck first at the 10-minute mark in the opening half. Mia Hollingsworth scored her third goal of the season on a shot from inside the 8. The well-placed assist was credited to Summer Lanter.

Valdosta's Suvi Savolainen tied the game at 1 on an assist from Madison Cutts. The goal came in the 31th minute and the score remained 1-1 at the break.

But this afternoon belonged to Lee senior Laura Thacker. Just over two minutes deep into the second stanza the defender stepped up to nail a penalty kick and put the Lady Flames up for good, 2-1.

In the 69^th minutes Kinsey Cichowitz hooked up with Lauren Peters on a well-executed give and go. Cichowitz slipped her shot past the keeper for her second goal of the year.

Thacker stepped up again to put the icing on the victory cake. The tally came off a corner kick as Thacker's header sailed into the back of the net. McKenzie Bricker registered the assist. Thacker, who suffered a cut above her eye at West Georgia that required eight stitches, played the entire 90 minute on Sunday.

Leer nominated the majority of the action as coach Hennessey used 17 players on the hot afternoon. They outshot Valdosta 31-10 and held a 14-4 advantage on shots on goal. McCall Gardner had 10 saves in taking the loss while Haley Gribler pulled down two saves and Erin Olson came on to grab one.

QUOTES FROM COACH HENNESSEY: "I was very pleased with our performance today. This was our first game in my opinion where we played our game for the entire 90 minutes. We played with a lot of discipline positionally and moved the ball well.
 
"All over the field our performances were good. I felt our midfielders did great job managing the the game throughout the contest, our strikers movement was good, and when we needed to defend during parts of the game our defenders did so with great tenacity and resilience. Overall it was a really good team performance.
 
"Hopefully we can take the momentum from the weekend into Friday nights game against West Florida."