PRESCOTT, Ariz. – The red-hot Yavapai College women's soccer team kept its perfect conference record intact on Saturday night in Prescott, Arizona, at Ken Lindley Field as the Roughriders defeated the GateWay Community College Geckos 5-2. On the season, the Roughriders are 7-4 overall (already matching last season's win total) to go along with the aforementioned 6-0 conference record.
"Overall, as a team, we are playing inspired with confidence, great energy and an aggressive mindset," Head Coach Rozie DeWeese said. "We had some outstanding collective and individual efforts on both sides of the ball tonight. We created a lot of scoring chances right from the start of the game.
"The players also did a great job of implementing our halftime adjustments and we came out strong to finish off the game."
The players also came out of the gates strong as five minutes into the match, the Roughriders found themselves with a 2-0 lead, with goals scored 30 seconds apart from each other.
On the first score, sophomore forward AJ Jones passed a ball through traffic to sophomore midfielder Dani Mares who easily tapped the ball past the Gecko goalkeeper for the score. It was Mares' second goal of the season.
30 seconds later, Mares sent a long cross pass over to Jones who got behind the defense and sent the ball off the top post and into the net for her fifth goal of the season.
About 10 minutes after the duo assisted on each other's goals, the Geckos cut the lead in half by burying a penalty kick to bring the score to 2-1 in favor of YC.
After taking a 2-1 lead into halftime, the Roughriders came out of the break and scored even quicker in the second half than they did at the start of the game.
On the play, Mares took the ball at the midfield, dribbled all the way into YC's offensive zone and passed the ball to sophomore forward Samantha Slaughter who then touched the ball over to fellow sophomore forward Hanna Urtado. Urtado promptly finished off the beautiful play by beating the keeper with a ball to the top-right corner of the net.
The goal was Urtado's team-leading seventh score of the season and it took her just a few more minutes of game time to increase that total to eight.
On the next play, sophomore midfielder Mia Torres found Urtado who beat a defender and buried another goal to the short side to give YC a commanding 4-1 lead.
GateWay, however, never gave up and was able to capitalize on a turnover at midfield and tallied another goal with 30 minutes left to play in the match.
Leading 4-2 with 16 minutes left to play, the Roughriders were able to take back their three-goal lead as sophomore midfielder Ally Barmettler found freshman midfielder Miranda Pena entering the offensive zone with some space to work with.
With time to aim her shot, Pena sent an absolute snipe to the top of the GateWay net for her third score of the season and a 5-2 YC lead that proved to be the final.
In net, freshman goalkeeper Morgan Trail took home the victory on the night.
Up Next
The Roughriders are back in action on Tuesday, October 4, in Prescott, Arizona, at Ken Lindley Field where they will take on the Arizona Western College Matadors with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m.
