After two consecutive College Cup appearances, Santa Clara’s Women’s soccer has some work cut out for them to make it three appearances in a row.
Ranked in the pre-season national polls in 5th place, the Broncos (1-3-0) started the season with a 1-0 victory over the San Jose Spartans. However, in their next game, they gave up an own goal to be surprised by UC Davis 1-0.
Next up was a trip to Texas, where they were dominated 7-0 to #7 Texas Christian University.
They then returned to the friendly confines of Stevens Stadium to face #6 UCLA. Sunshine Fontes scored in the 12th minute for UCLA, and they were able to hold onto the goal to earn the victory over Santa Clara, 1-0.
“There were times I thought we really controlled the game,” noted Santa Clara head coach Jerry Smith after the UCLA match. “I feel good about that, especially after the first couple of results and performances we had. We always knew this year would take a little longer to figure out the puzzle pieces. We figured out what didn’t work the last two games and came up with something different today…and we like what we saw.”
Santa Clara will continue to build their team chemistry by hosting No. 10 Penn State Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
In other Bay Area College games:
#13 Stanford (3-0-0) has started out the season strong defeating Sacramento State 5-0, University of San Francisco 3-0, and UC Santa Barbara 5-1. They also defeated the Chinese National team 1-0 in a friendly.
Cal (2-1-0) lost their season opener to UC Irvine 1-0 before rebounding with a 2-0 victory over St. Mary’s and a 2-1 victory over UC San Diego.
University of San Francisco (2-1-1) beat Portland State 4-0 to start the season before tying Oregon 1-1 and losing to Stanford 3-0. They rebounded by defeating UC Davis 2-0.
Saint Mary’s College (3-1-0) defeated Cal Poly 3-1 and Santa Barbara 1-0 before losing to Cal 2-0. They rebounded with a 3-0 victory over San Jose State.
San Jose State (0-2-0) is looking for its first victory after losing to Santa Clara 1-0 and Saint Mary’s 3-0.
