Offensive struggles of the past were put to rest with a breakthrough performance in a 4-2 victory against the Hawaii Warriors Friday at Guy Wicks Field.
After a stretch of six games with only three goals to their name the Vandal women’s soccer team spent all week in practice trying to find solutions to the scoring drought.
Their work came to fruition in the form of four different goal scorers and a dominating performance in Idaho’s first conference win of the season.
“I think we came in here knowing we were prepared … that we were going to go at goal and that we were going to take those shots, take those opportunities,” sophomore Bailey Hewitt said. “What we’ve been working on all week came together today and rightfully so, we deserved it.”
Idaho got the scoring festivities kicked off early when freshman Lilly Archer took a cross from Chelsea Small and struck it into the back of the net. A shot that coach Pete Showler said showed his team what they are capable of.
“That first goal, chest down volley — unbelievable, That set the tone and gave them the belief,” he said. “It just gives them the belief they have and we just went on and played that same way.”
Chelsea Breen gave Idaho a 2-nil lead deeper into the first half when she nailed home a header off of a corner kick.
Despite already having a two-goal lead the Vandals didn’t back down and kept attacking the Warriors, scoring a third goal shortly into the second half when Jill Flockhart sent a ball into the box that Hewitt finished.
“2-nil is a tough score because you can sometimes ease off a little bit but this second half we didn’t, we just kept going at them and kept going at them,” Showler said.
The Warriors, who scored seven goals in their two previous games, didn’t go down without a fight. In the 65th minute Hawaii’s Krystal Pascua took advantage of a misplayed ball from Idaho goalkeeper Caroline Towles and calmly scored on a wide open net to bring the Warriors within two.
But Idaho answered when freshman Katie Baran put away her third goal of the year in the 84th minute.
Despite conceding a second goal to the Warriors late in the match, the Vandals still dominated the game, being the more physical and technically sound team.
“We just had to know that Hawaii were going to be up for it,” Showler said. “They’re a tough team to break down but we did a very good job of it today and controlled possession and played with purpose.”
With the offensive output, the Vandals are hoping that what they showed on the pitch against Hawaii will continue throughout the rest of their Western Athletic Conference schedule.
“It’s going to carry over to the rest of the conference games,” Flockhart said. “We know we can do it, we knew that we could do it before but now we’ve shown we can do it and we know it’s going to carry over to the rest of the games.”