NORMAL, Ill. -- The University of North Dakota soccer team suffered a 2-0 defeat to Illinois State on Sunday afternoon at Adeladie Street Field.

Illinois State got on the board early in the 17th minute after a corner kick was played back into the box and headed in by the Rebirds' Mikayla Unger. Despite giving up the early goal, North Dakota was able to keep Illinois State from scoring during play for the remainder of the contest, as the second goal was scored off a PK in the 86th minute.

“Today was a tough game, we came into the weekend with some injuries and didn't improve through the weekend,” head coach Matt Kellogg said.

Despite the results over the two games in Illinois and the injuries to the roster, UND did see some positives come out over the weekend.

“We had several players step up big for us and play different roles than they're used to and more minutes than they have been playing,” Kellogg commented. “In particular, we had Emily Smithson and Zoe Foster play in the midfield for us and they did a great job. Erin Svensson started both games for us at outside back and played huge minutes for us over the weekend.”

Svensson totaled 73 minutes in the game against the Redbirds and 101 minutes in the Western Illinois game on Friday.

In net for the Fighting Hawks Catherine Klein made a total of 10 saves, her second highest single-game total this year.

With the loss North Dakota drops to 1-5-2 as the Fighting Hawks conclude the nonconference portion of the season.

“We have a bye-weekend coming up before conference play and we are going to use this time to get some players back to healthy and work on a few things before heading into Big Sky play,” Kellogg said. “The results haven't fallen our way in the early part of the season, but we have always had our eyes on the Big Sky part of our schedule and will be ready for this half of the schedule.”

North Dakota has the Sept. 16-18 weekend off and will return to the field on Sept. 25 when the Fighting Hawks take on Weber State in Ogden, Utah.