Friday’s match ended in a golden moment for the Cal women’s soccer team.
After 102 minutes of play in the road match between the Bears and UC Davis, Cal forward Lauren Battung brought an end to the hard-fought battle with a long rocket into the net.
The double-overtime goal gave Cal (5-2-0) the victory and ended the Aggies’ (3-1-1) undefeated season thus far.
Before the golden goal, the match was stagnant at a 1-1 tie. The Bears had struggled offensively as the Aggies outshot them 14-9.With the fate of the match still undecided through the first overtime period, the Bears went into the second overtime with the pressing awareness that the game was in the closing minutes of sudden death.
“We knew that we needed that goal,” said Cal forward Mekenna DeBack. “We didn’t want to come home with a tie or a loss.”
On Friday, the golden moment to cap off the game belonged to Battung. For her, it was more than just a winning goal. After finishing last season as the second highest scorer on the team, Battung had not yet scored through the first six games of the season.
“She’s been frustrated the last couple of games with not being able to score, because once you get the first one it is like a waterfall and more goals just come,” DeBeck said. “She was so excited, she was jumping up and down.”
Battung’s struggles this season mirrored her team’s frustration in Friday evening’s game. The pitch was wider than the team is accustomed to, which caused spacing issues for Cal.
“The defenders held compacted together pretty well when we had the ball,” DeBack said. “We had to get around their outside defenders, which was hard because we weren’t playing wide. ”
Though the Bears struggled through most of the game to penetrate the Davis defense, a breakthrough came in the 32nd minute when junior Rachel Mercik was able to beat the Aggie defender down the line and serve a cross in to DeBeck in the center. DeBeck finished with her head to give the Bears the 1-0 advantage.
However, the lead did not last long. The Aggies retaliated with a goal of their own in the 42nd minute after Cal defender Emi Lawson made a save, but the ball was not cleared. The deflection allowed Aggie Hannah Hicks to tap it in to bring the game to a tie.
“The beginning of the game started rough,” DeBeck said. “After Davis scored their goal that helped us to push it.”
Their strength in the center and their solid back line– which effectively prevented the Bears from generating an outside attack– helped the Aggies to hold the stalemate through the end of the first overtime period.
But just two minutes into the second overtime, the bastion could hold out no longer and the Bears emerged victorious.
“We weren’t frantic, but we knew we had to get it done,” DeBack said. “It was just a matter of finding the outside, connecting passes, and communicating better.”
Taylor Brink covers women’s soccer. Contact him at [email protected].
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