The Vandal soccer team has struggled on offense thus far during their spring season — that all changed on Saturday when they beat North Idaho College 6-1.
Parker Wilson | Argonaut
Gabby Leong throws the ball back into play after it was kicked out-of-bounds by an NIC player during Saturday’s game on the SprinTurf. Idaho beat NIC 6-1.
Led by Reagan Quigley’s hat trick performance — the first of her three goals coming within minutes of the start of the game — the Vandals gave the NIC defense problems all afternoon.
“When you get those first few in — or even the first goal of the game — that’s when you take control of the game and settle it down,” Quigley said.
Quigley credited Alyssa Pease and Kavita Battan’s technical ability with the ball for part of the reason the Vandals exploded offensively. Pease and Battan, along with Kaysha Darcy, helped boost the Vandals attack. The sophomore duos’ ability to finish goal scoring opportunities gave the other Vandals opportunities to score, she said.
The Vandals were able to find holes in the NIC defense on the outside to exploit, Vandal assistant coach Ashley O’Brien said, who filled in as head coach for the day, as Derek Pittman was out on a recruiting trip.
“Everything clicked today,” she said. “We got numbers forward, we had some great finishes. Our confidence has skyrocketed from just being in front of goal and getting those opportunities.”
The swarming Vandal defense was able to force the NIC offense into bad spots on multiple occasions and were able to exploit those mistakes into offensive opportunities, O’Brien said. Each of the Vandals’ six goals came from an outlet pass from the outside, and they had opportunities that just sailed over the net, on more than one occasion.
This week in practice the Vandals were focusing on constant pressure on defense, O’Brien said, and it showed as the Vandals managed to make themselves at home on their side of the field — which was a major focus of the game plan.
“Our goal was to keep the ball in the attacking half the whole time,” O’Brien said. “We kept our pressure pretty high and won a lot of first and second balls and then attacked forward.”
Although not officially an emphasis in practices this week, the forwards focused on going hard on the attack and taking as many shots on goal as possible, attempting to improve the defense with their offense. The Vandals succeeded in this strategy for the most part, since they only allowed one NIC goal as the Cardinals’ Taylor Peterson netted a goal late in the second half.
O’Brien added that the early lead helped boost Idaho’s confidence up and gave it the opportunity to continue to work on the swarming defense that Pittman has been implementing this spring.
After the victory over NIC, the Vandals headed to Spokane later that afternoon for a scrimmage with Concordia.
The Vandals will be back on the SprinTurf Saturday as they host both in-state rival Boise State and future Big Sky Conference opponent Montana.
Joshua Gamez can be reached at [email protected]