Women’s soccer energy key to first win

The UTRGV Women’s Soccer Team rode a high-energy atmosphere to get a 2-0 home win tonight over Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in the South Texas Showdown. 

With a crowd of 818, the Pep Band pounding away on drums and the energy from the team itself, goalkeeper Maile Lunardi told The Rider she believes the high energy was the biggest difference in the victory. 

“I think that hearing our sideline, hearing everybody on the bench and people on the field yelling and talking, encouraging [us], I think that really made a difference,” she said.

Lunardi had seven saves tonight and said her defense helped her out a lot.

“Yeah, I thought we played absolutely phenomenal today,” she said. “We had good ball movement. Everyone was high energy today.”

The first goal came in the first four minutes of the game by junior midfielder Anna Barkey and the second goal scored by junior forward Shentatious Knox coming in the last five minutes.

The Vaqueras’ overall record now stands at 1-1. 

Glad Bugariu, head coach for the UTRGV Women’s Soccer Team, told The Rider it’s good to win at home and finally get the first win of the season.

“We love having a nice crowd,” Bugariu said. “And, more importantly, we were able to perform and play some nice soccer and get a victory, which is so nice to see. I hope everyone enjoyed it.”

He said derby games always have moments where the momentum shifts and the opposition gets opportunities to equalize and that was the case going into the second half of the game. 

“We weathered that storm, you know, we were lucky in certain phases, but, overall, you know, once we got past that, we completely dominated the last 20 minutes,” Bugariu said. 

Islanders Head Coach Craig Shaw told The Rider he believes it is a poor result because his team didn’t play the first half with high energy. 

“They had more energy in that first half and we didn’t show up until about, like, three minutes left of the first half,” Shaw said. “And then, we saw that we could come out with energy. We can match them and even outplay them, but if you come out with more energy, you’re gonna get goals.” 

The UTRGV Women’s Soccer Team’s next opponent is Texas Christian University at 1 p.m. Sunday in Fort Worth.