STARKVILLE — As the persistent banging of drums reverberated throughout the stands at the Mississippi State Soccer Field Thursday, senior forward MaKayla Waldner began her run.
As a ball from classmate Hailey Zerbel trickled a touch past her and toward the feet of an Ole Miss defender, Waldner quickly gathered.
Catching just enough to poke it free, Waldner corralled the ball, took one step and flung it under the outstretched body of Rebels’ keeper Ashley Orkus.
Sprinting toward the MSU sideline, Waldner joined a raucous group of orange penny-clad teammates.
The Bulldogs had their equalizer.
“Zerbel kicked it long and I knew I’m going to have to run through some people,” Waldner quipped. “So I ran through the first girl and said ‘OK, let’s just hope I can get this one.’ And so just a little dink touch and that’s all that matters and then that brought the intensity to the game.”
Playing in front of 1,015 fans, MSU battled to a 1-1 draw Saturday night against their cross-state rivals.
Ole Miss earned the lone lead of the game when Haley Stackpole beat MSU goalkeeper Gabby English with an 18th minute strike.
The goal came just a few minutes after Rebels midfielder Julia Phillips rang a header off the crossbar following an Ole Miss corner kick.
Waldner narrowly missed an early goal of her own as she broke to the left side of goal midway through the half. Booting a ball toward the top left corner, her shot wobbled just wide before harmlessly falling for a goal kick.
Battling through a back-and-forth second half, sophomore forward Monigo Karnley collected a ball toward the top of the Ole Miss box. Bobbing and weaving through three Rebels, her shot attempt was blocked out of bounds by the Ole Miss defense.
After a handful of wayward chances missed the mark late, English corralled a rifled shot from Rebels junior Channing Foster in the waning minutes of the second overtime period to eek out the draw.
Friday marks the sixth time in seven years the Magnolia Cup returns to Oxford as MSU has not downed Ole Miss since a 3-2 double overtime victory in Starkville in 2012.
“For me that’s very bitter,” Waldner conceded. “But my last year playing Ole Miss I’d rather take a tie than a loss.”
Through 10 games, the Bulldogs now sit 5-4-1 and 0-1-1 in SEC play. Having lost three of their past four matches — all to ranked opponents — MSU now gets a slight reprieve as the main body of SEC play awaits.
The Bulldogs’ final eight games of the year include just two teams currently ranked within TopDrawerSoccer.com’s Top 25 poll — (No. 18 Tennessee and No. 19 Arkansas), though Armstrong maintains each match will be a unique battle of its own — starting with Saturday’s bout with Kentucky.
“To be honest, we’re taking it one game at a time — we have to,” he conceded. “We’ve just got to focus on the next opponents and what the game plan for that is. There’s so many different styles of teams in the league and each game presents a different challenge so we’ve just got to make sure we don’t look too far ahead and that’s what we’re doing with Kentucky.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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