JACKSONVILLE – The Jacksonville State soccer team will put its three-match winning streak on the line this weekend with a pair of home outings at the JSU Soccer Field on Friday and Sunday of the holiday weekend.

The Gamecocks will face the Runnin' Bulldogs of Gardner-Webb (0-4) in a 7 p.m. Friday night contest before concluding the weekend with a Sunday afternoon tilt with Georgia Southern (3-1-1). Ad mission is free to all JSU home matches. Both matches will be available on ESPN+.

It is the first three-game winning streak for JSU since it strung together three straight wind during the 2014 season (at Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Illinois and at Austin Peay).

JSU leads the all-time series against GWU, 3-2, having won the last two meetings between the two programs. Jax State and GWU had home-and-home series during the 2010, 2011 seasons and most recently in the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The Gamecocks claimed a 1-0 result in oiling Springs, North Carolina during the 2014 campaign before downing the Runnin' Bulldogs, 3-2, in Jacksonville the following season. GWU's two wins came in 2010 and 2011. The first JSU-GWU meeting came in 2002.

Jax State and GSU will meet for the fifth time dating back to the 1999 season and the first match up since the 2018 campaign. The Gamecocks claimed wins in 2000 and 2016 before the Eagles posted a 1-0 decision in Statesboro, Georgia in 2018. Jax State will be looking to record its second win over Georgia Southern on its home pitch as the two played a scoreless draw in 1999 in Jacksonville, followed by a 3-1 winning result in 2016. 

The Gamecocks broke open a 1-1 halftime deadlock with three goals in the second half to down Alabama A&M, 4-1, for the third win in a row in their last outing on the pitch. Highlighting JSU's second half effort was senior Alicia Pallister, who filled her stat line with assists on three of the four Gamecock goals and gave the club breathing room with the JSU's third goal of the contest in the 71st minute. Pallister, who accumulated nine assists last season and ranked among the national leaders in NCAA Division I Soccer in assists, aided goals by Nyeemah Prescod-Beckles, Cynthia Bagozzi and Gabriel Clarke. Clarke finished with an impressive performance with a pair of assists with her goal.

Senior Alicia Pallister has picked up right where she left off from last season (Spring, 2021) with a strong start to the 2021 campaign. Last Sunday against Alabama A&M, Pallister dished out three assists and added a goal. She now has 16 career assists and six goals in her career at JSU.


Redshirt junior goalkeeper Morgan Lerch has turned in quality work between the posts with a pair of shutouts and collecting three wins. Through the first four matches, Lerch has 18 saves and a goals- against average of 1.43.

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