After 90 minutes of a hard-fought game, the BYU women’s soccer team wasn’t able to put the ball in the back of the net, losing its last home game and Senior Day 1-0 against San Diego on Saturday.
BYU women’s soccer head coach Jennifer Rockwood was disappointed with the loss and insisted BYU wasn’t on top of its game.
“It’s an extremely disappointing loss,” Rockwood said. “Our last game here, it was hard to go down this way. You have to play your best at the end of the year and we just struggled today. We didn’t have our rhythm.”
[/media-credit]Rockwood was most surprised with the results because of the way the team had played lately. The Cougars were on a four-game winning streak going into the match against San Diego, and up until this game, had played some of its best soccer so far this season.
“We didn’t come out with a lot of energy,” Rockwood said. “Especially considering how well we moved the ball our last few games, I don’t know if I have any answers. We weren’t prepared and I guess that’s on us as coaches.”
The first half proved to be a constant fight for possession of the ball, with both teams’ defensive lines receiving the majority of the action.
The Cougars and the Toreros pressed forward toward each others goals the entire first half but were unable to net any balls. Going into halftime, the score still sat at 0-0.
The second half saw a rejuvenated BYU team that seemed as though it was ready to finally put a goal away. Within the first minute, junior midfielder Jessica Ringwood fired an unsuccessful shot. Only three minutes later, Ringwood got another shot off, but still wasn’t able to get BYU on the scoreboard.
The only goal of the game came in the 34th minute of the second half when San Diego intercepted junior defender Lindsi Lisonbee’s pass as Lisonbee attempted to clear the ball from the back. BYU goalkeeper McKinzie Olson deflected the first shot taken by the Toreros, but after some confusion in the box, San Diego found the back of the net and took a 1-0 lead.
BYU continued to pressure San Diego in hopes of evening the score. Payne, Ringwood and sophomore midfielder Rachel Manning had two shots a piece by the end of the game, but BYU was unable to make a come back.
Olson did record five saves on the day, which increases her lead as BYU’s all-time career saves leader with 274.
Junior forward Carlee Payne was frustrated with the loss but didn’t blame any one person.
“We came off slow,” Payne said. “We didn’t come out our hardest and we needed to have played our game, but we didn’t. We knew that this game was a make or break for our season and we played stressed and weren’t as composed as we should have been.”
