Scoring opportunities can be few and far between in soccer, so allowing an early goal can sometimes spell disaster.

The Cyclones (4-4) found themselves in that position twice this weekend, allowing a goal to Iowa in the sixth minute Friday and to North Dakota State in the seventh minute Sunday.

“Goals aren’t very numerous in soccer, so to kind of start one down, dig yourself a hole right away, it’s a little disheartening,” said ISU forward Koree Willer.

The Cyclones allowed another goal in the 54th minute and seemed to be on their way to a blowout loss until Maribell Morales reignited the team with a goal in the 61st minute.

The Cyclones found an equalizer in the 80th minute when Willer converted a penalty kick opportunity and tied the game at two goals apiece. The final 10 minutes ticked past without a goal, forcing overtime.

In overtime, NDSU was awarded a penalty kick in the 94th minute and Amy Yang converted, scoring her second goal of the game and giving the Bison the win.

“It’s encouraging to show that they had some fight to get back into it and put some pressure on them,” said ISU coach Tony Minatta. “We’re excited about some of those things, but at the end of the day, the start of overtime they came out wanting it more and we didn’t.”

Battling back and forcing overtime may be encouraging, but the slow starts certainly are not. Following the early goal allowed against NDSU, the team appeared flat and struggled to regain energy until it was too late.

“It’s something we can control and obviously it’s incredibly frustrating, but that’s in our hands, that’s on our shoulders and we need to work on that as a team,” said ISU defender Madi Ott.

Ott and Willer both said it comes down to every individual on the team making a conscious effort to avoid allowing an early goal and bring maximum effort from the first whistle on.

“It’s almost as if this team feels things are going to happen for them the way they did against Pepperdine, but not remembering what they did against Pepperdine to get that result,” Minatta said.

Minatta plans on implementing a solution this week to help combat that. The coach is taking his team back to the basics.

He has noticed that his team seems to come out strong in the first few games of the year, so he is reverting back to a preseason style of practice for the week.

During the season, practices slow down, so players can conserve energy for games, allowing them to get into a certain rhythm. With only one game coming up next weekend instead of the usual two, Minatta is going to break that cycle this week.

That means harder practices with more intense drills, but Minatta said that alone will not be enough to end the Cyclones’ problems with slow starts.

“It’s not something you can just talk about,” he said. “It’s something you got to do.”