By Kurt Plaster
The BYU women”s soccer team went 1-1 in their weekend games at Southfield, losing Friday night Sept. 6 to No. 18 Kentucky before defeating Northwestern on Saturday Sept. 7.
The Cougars shut out the Northwestern Wildcats 5-0 at Saturday night”s match with 1,384 fans on hand.
Senior Jeni Willardson-Viernes started the scoring 23 minutes into the game on a breakaway. She drew the goalie out and put the ball in the left corner for her third goal of the season.
In the second half, Viernes connected with sophomore Aydre Soffe who moved the ball past Northwestern goalkeeper Susie Mcreery for Soffe”s first goal of the season at the 53:43 mark.
After the first two goals, head coach Jennifer Rockwood went to her bench where junior Jennifer Henry-Fielding came in to score her first two goals of the season.
“It was nice to finally put one away,” said Fielding of her first goal. She received a nice pass through defenders from Krissa Campbell on the assist.
On Fielding”s second goal the ball bounced off two Northwestern players and into the net. Just two minutes after that, freshman Brooke Bowman received a pass from fellow freshman Brooke Thulin and scored by putting the ball into the right side of the net.
The BYU defense allowed just eight attempts by Northwestern, contrasted by the 22 shots on goal made by the BYU offense.
Bowman said the Cougars were hungry for this victory after the loss to the Kentucky Wildcats.
“We didn”t play very well against Kentucky and there was a bit of a wake-up call,” she said. “Against Northwestern we all wanted to come out hard from the very beginning and we just stepped it up and played a lot better.”
The 2-0 loss to the nationally ranked Kentucky Wildcats is only the ninth home loss the Cougars have had in eight year. It was only the fourth time in eight years the Cougars have been shut out at Southfield.
“We just got off to a slow start,” said Rockwood.
The Wildcats took control of the game in the first 15 minutes when Kentucky midfielder Elizabeth Ramsay scored the first goal of the game.
The Cougars defense was able to hold the Wildcats until the second half when Ramsay scored again at 56:43 on a penalty shot that made it into the upper right hand corner of the net.
Krissa Campbell lead the Cougars with three shots on goal and Kelly Hunsberger and Twink Krainik provided a boost off the bench with two shots on goal each.
The Cougars look to build upon this performance as they go into next week”s action at home again against Idaho State on Sept. 14 at 7 p.m. season.
