The OU soccer team split a two-game home series with two Mid-America Conference opponents this weekend, earning its first win of the season in the process.

Freshman forward Jordan White ended the Sooners’ (1-2) weekend on a high note Sunday, scoring on a breakaway with nine minutes left to lead the Sooners to a 2-1 victory over Ball State. It was a thrilling moment for a woman playing her third collegiate game.

“[I was thinking] I have to make this goal so we can win,” White said. “Afterwards I felt amazing. It was an amazing moment. Indescribable.”

Both goalies were stellar early, holding their opponent scoreless until late in the first half, when Ball State forward Sarah Shumacker scored off a centering pass.

It didn’t take long for the Sooners to knot things up, when sophomore forward Whitney Palmer scored her second goal in three days by connecting with sophomore midfielder Kelsey Allison at the 54-minute mark.

“I decided to step it up and score a goal today and it feels good to come out with a win,” Palmer said.

With the game remaining tied for a good portion of the second half, overtime seemed assured. But White’s breakaway — the first goal of her career — came at the perfect time and sealed the game for the Sooners.

The first half of Sunday’s game was plagued by nine offside penalties for the Sooners, many of which eliminated scoring opportunities. During halftime, head coach Nicole Nelson stressed the fact that they had committed those penalties and her team responded by being more disciplined — committing one during the last 45 minutes of the game.

Nelson said the lack of offsides in the second half was a key component to OU’s first win of the season.

“I told them to make runs down the line and make and then penetrate behind,” Nelson said. “It’s easy to fix offsides and we also made adjustments with the types of balls we were playing and when we were playing those balls over that backline because [offsides penalties were] so high.”

This victory was Nelson’s first as the Sooners’ head coach and it was the earliest victory for any first-year coach in OU soccer’s brief history.

“Tremendous effort on our team’s part,” Nelson said. “We played a team that was rested, so the energy it took to come up with a win to be down a goal at half shows tremendous spirit by the part of these players.

The win came after the Sooners opened the weekend with a 3-1 loss Friday night against Central Michigan. Palmer put OU on the board first with the first half’s only score on a double assist play by Allison and sophomore forward Sage Coralli.

After going into the half with the lead, everything crumbled in the second half. Central Michigan scored the game-tying and tie-breaking goals within two minutes of each other, one of which came on a penalty kick created by a yellow card at the top of the Sooners’ box.

The yellow card was the Sooners’ second of the game, which forced them to lose a player for the remainder of the contest.

This caused problems in their defensive scheme, resulting in the CMU’s third goal.

“We made very young mistakes tonight,” Nelson said. “We have to keep getting better, but those mistakes are young mistakes. But you have freshmen and sophomores making freshmen and sophomore mistakes.”

The Sooners head down to Denton, Texas, to take on the North Texas Mean Green this Friday night and then return for their next home game this Sunday to play host to the Rice Owls.