WQIO Ohio's Super Station
GAMBIER, Ohio — For the first time since 1994, the Kenyon College women’s soccer team owns a 3-0-0 record through its first three games of the season. Wednesday afternoon, the host Owls, in their home-opening game, notched that third win by blitzing the visiting Thiel College Tomcats, 9-0.
The win was the third straight via shutout for Kenyon and it already tripled the team’s win total from one season ago. Through the first three games of this 2025 schedule, the Owls have outscored their opponents by a combined count of 13-0.
The 9-0 final score marked the fifth time in program history that Kenyon posted that wide of a margin over an opponent. The program record, however, was a 16-0 victory over Defiance College in the first contest of the 1998 season.
Kenyon opened Wednesday’s offensive onslaught in the game’s ninth minute. That’s when senior Julianna Granetzke, working the right side, fired a low crossing pass to sophomore Claire Pruner, who buried her shot into the Tomcats’ net for her first goal of the season.
From there, sophomore Emily Copeland, Kenyon’s leading goal scorer from a season ago, took over the game. She used an assist from Pruner to put the Owls ahead 2-0 in the game’s 21st minute. Then, within the next six minutes of play, Copeland scored twice more to log her first collegiate hat trick. She scored an unassisted goal in the 22nd minute and then booted home her third tally in the game’s 16th minute, using an assist from sophomore Sonia Butske.
Before Butske served up that assist to Copeland, she scored her own goal, the first of her collegiate career, off an assist from junior Sadie Krueger. That, however, was not all from the Owls. First-year Maisie Bruner joined the scoring party with her first collegiate goal. Truly Martin tacked on two more Kenyon goals and Butske scored again to push the Kenyon lead to 9-0 at the half.
Due to injury, Thiel (0-2-0), which traveled with just 11 active players, had to play nearly three-quarters of the game with just ten, and, at times, nine players on the field. By half, the Tomcats were outshot by the Owls, 37-0, which turned out to be the final count.
With the game already decided, the Owls took their foot off the gas pedal and decided nine was enough. The objective throughout the second half was to work on formation, transition, and possession, as well as getting the reserves some playing time, without taking any shots on goal.
The Kenyon team will look to keep momentum going in its next game, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Saturday at Mavec Field against Franciscan University.
