Women’s soccer wraps dominating spring season with pair of draws
The USU soccer team earned a pair of draws at the Boise State tournament Saturday against Montana (1-1) and Boise State (0-0).
The Aggies finished the game against Montana 1-1 with a goal credited to freshman forward Mari Miyashiro and an assist from junior striker Shantel Flanary.
“Shantel did a really nice job of recognizing that she was isolated on the flank and took her player on 1v1 and got around her,” said USU head coach Heather Cairns. “Mari put herself in a really great position to receive that pass.”
Cairns said Miyashiro’s goal was a “hopeful shot.”
“Mari was pretty well marked,” Cairns said. “She was inside of the box and she just kinda hit a loopy ball over the defender and it also ended up dropping real quick right under the crossbar, so she cleared the keeper as well. It had a lot of backspin on it. She wasn’t even sure if it was going to be on frame.”
The Aggies took Miyashiro’s one goal lead into halftime of the shortened game. USU dominated the possession of the match but experienced an unfortunate play with 20 minutes left and knocked an own goal to tie the game 1-1.
“Our midfield and center backs got a little bit disorganized and we ended up giving away a foul just on our side of half-field,” Cairns said. “(Montana) pinged that ball in and again we had a bit of a miscommunication between our defenders and our goalkeeper and it was actually an own goal.”
Junior defender Summer Tillotson had a chance to give the Aggies a win with a freekick, but the shot hit the crossbar and the final result was a 1-1 tie.
“Soccer is just one of those weird sports,” Cairns said. “Sometimes they just end in a tie and you’re upset with how you played or it will end in a tie and you feel like your team played pretty well.”
In the match against Boise State, the Aggies started the game off strongly but did not find the back of the net to put away the win.
“It’s like the goal-scoring mechanism just turned off for us this weekend,” Cairns said. “We played some really good soccer and we couldn’t get results in the goal.”
While the Aggies have scored 20 goals in the spring offseason, they have allowed only two goals into their own net with neither of those coming in the run of play. They gave up a goal after a corner-kick at the BYU indoor tournament and the own goal against Montana.
Cairns said she is looking forward to the regular season but said the fall is a long way away.
“That’s our goal in the spring to put that skeleton in place to be able to make our transition into our fall season really quickly,” Cairns said. “We’ve added six new players but we return 21 players. Those 21, we want to make sure that we have our system in place for that next year, that we’re just adding players instead of reworking the whole system.”
– tavin.stucki@aggiemail.usu.edu