SPORTS digest

YSU women’s soccer team wins 4th straight

YOUNGSTOWN

Senior Courtney Lavin scored her first career goal in the 80th minute to lead the Youngstown State women’s soccer team to its fourth straight win with a 1-0 victory over Fort Wayne on Friday night at Farmers National Bank Field.

The Penguins improve to 4-1 on the season and match the best start in program history. The win also marks YSU’s fourth consecutive shutout, which is also a school record. Fort Wayne falls to 0-4 on the season.

YSU and Fort Wayne played an extremely physical game and a tightly contested match for 90 minutes. Late in the second half, the Penguins were able to apply pressure on the Mastodons defense. Freshman Sydney Ossege crossed the ball from the right corner and found Lavin in the center of the box, who blasted a shot into the right-lower corner of the net, at the 79:22 mark.

Sophomore goalkeeper Kylee Moffett tallied two saves and extended her shutout streak to four. Her total also ranks second on the single-season shutout chart and is just one shy of tying the record of five.

The Penguins visit Buffalo at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

YSU volleyball falls twice in tournament

EL PASO, TEXAS

The Youngstown State volleyball team was handed its first two defeats of the season on Friday at the Glory Road Invitational. The Penguins opened the tournament losing 25-19, 25-20, 25-16 to New Mexico, and they dropped a 25-21, 25-20, 25-19 affair to North Dakota.

Against New Mexico, the Penguins hit .200 in the opening set and .333 in the third set. They committed 11 attack errors and hit negative-.172 in the second set, which was oddly the closest of the three. Sam Brown had nine kills while Margaux Thompson finished with eight kills and a team-high 12 digs.

New Mexico got 13 kills from Hailey Rubino and hit .320 as a team.

In the second match of the day, Sarah Varcolla paced the offense with 10 kills, and El Paso native Lauren Blanco led all players with 13 digs.

Benson’s blast lifts Scrappers over Spikes

NILES

Will Benson hit his team leading eighth homerun in the bottom of the eighth inning to break a 1-1 tie and lift the Mahoning Valley Scrappers over the State College Spikes 2-1 on Friday night. With the win, the Scrappers push their division lead out to 2.5 games with six games left in the season.

State College jumped out to an early lead on a solo homerun from Matt Davis.

In the bottom of the fourth inning the Scrappers would tie the game. With one out Tyler Friis walked and moved to second on a Jason Rodriguez single. Clark Scolamiero followed with an RBI single to score Friis to tie the game at one.

The game would stay tied until the bottom of the eighth when with one out Benson drove an 0-1 pitch over the rightfield wall for the go ahead homerun. Felix Tati then worked a 1-2-3 ninth inning to close out the game.

With the win the Scrappers increase their lead in the Pinckney Division to 2.5 games over State College. The Scrappers also lowered their magic number to clinch the division to four.

U.S. World Cup hopes in jeopardy after loss

HARRISON, N.J.

The United States put its hopes of an eighth straight World Cup berth in peril, giving up a pair of goals to Marco Urena in a 2-0 defeat to Costa Rica on Friday night that brought the Americans’ resurgence under coach Bruce Arena to a crashing thud.

Urena spun around defender Tim Ream, then caught Tim Howard leaning and beat the goalkeeper to the far post in the 31st minute. Urena, the lone forward in a 4-5-1 formation, doubled the lead in the 82nd with a shot from 18 yards after David Guzman intercepted a poor pass by Geoff Cameron.

Staff/wire report