Over the Labor Day weekend, NIU women’s soccer earned its second straight weekend split to start the season.

Friday, the Huskies (1-2) fell 1-0 against Illinois State (3-0-2), despite outshooting ISU 16-6 in the game, 15 of them coming in the second half.

The Huskies also had an edge in corner kicks taken in the game of 10-0.

In the 70th minute, ISU took advantage of one of their rare offensive chances, when sophomore forward Rachel Tejada put her team ahead for good. It was Tejada’s eighth goal of the season in only five games.

NIU head coach John Ross said his team has to take more advantage of the set pieces that they earn, specifically corner kicks.

“I think we need to definitely make sure were paying attention to detail and doing what our assignment is,” Ross said. “Not trying to do somebody else’s well. Today we were getting services that were dangerous and now we just gotta make sure that we’re organizing them and be disciplined and we will start to take advantage of those.”

Sunday, the Huskies (2-2) used two goals in the first 28 minutes of the match to help catapult them to a 3-0 over the Loyola Ramblers (1-4).

NIU’s first goal was scored off a Shelbi Johnson corner kick, over to Lauren Noonan, who headed the ball to Junior forward Cori Frankenberg, who scored her second goal of the season to give the Huskies a 1-0 lead in the third minute.

Ross felt the early goal gave his team some confidence.

“It always helps your confidence when you score early,” Ross said. “I think the kids were pretty confident coming out they’ve been training hard working hard doing the right things. It’s starting to come together for us.”

In the 20th minute, the duo of Frankenberg and Johnson combined again for us NIU’s second goal of the game. This time the goal was scored by Johnson and Frankenberg got the assist.

Freshman mid-fielder Sara Spaulding capped the scoring with an unassisted goal in the 65th minute.

“It felt amazing,” Spaulding said. “It was a team effort all the way. But I’m really happy with the way the team played and I wouldn’t have done it without them.”