On Friday, #11 Stanford women’s soccer defeated Pacific 9-1 in their home exhibition at Cagan Stadium. Fifth-year midfielder Katie Duong and sophomore midfielder Jasmine Aikey each scored two goals for the Cardinal. Duong scored her goals at 40:22 and 81:28 while Aikey scored her goals at 1:31 and 65:30. Pacific forward Anaya Shelton was the one who scored a goal for the Tigers at the 6:19 mark after being awarded a free kick.
BOX SCORE: Pacific at Stanford-August 11th
READ: Breaking down the 2023 Stanford Women’s Soccer schedule
“Yeah, really fun evening,” Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe said after the match. “Great collective performance, scored a lot of goals, and yeah, great things to build on for the future.”
For Stanford, this match was all about getting the jitters out, getting the feel of a match, and also getting as many players as possible the chance to play. When you look at the box score and see how many different players got into the match and made an impact, it’s clear that they accomplished that objective: seven different players scored a goal and of the nine goals that were scored, seven came off assists.
“I think simplifying our game, getting in a rhythm, starting to establish our possession,” Ratcliffe said of what the focuses were coming in. “And then obviously finishing chances and we did a great job finishing, tonight…Yeah, it gets the nerves out for the team, it’s a trial run, they get the uniforms on, and hopefully it will help us because on the road its even a little bit harder.
“So now we’ve had this trial run, we should be a little bit further ahead when we go down on the road and yeah for us as coaches we learn a lot from watching the team play against another opponent and we can learn from it and grow the team in the next week or so.”
“It feels great,” Duong said of playing a match. “I mean, it’s been super fun playing with the team the past two weeks. Just getting to know all the new players, seeing how the pieces fit together, and then tonight obviously getting to play a real opponent was super cool. There’s nothing like playing on Cagan.”
While the match was won going away, it was tight early on as Pacific was able to even things up at one goal apiece thanks to Shelton’s free kick. When asked about that goal by Shelton, Ratcliffe was quick to blame that on himself, saying they haven’t yet polished their defensive set plays.
“Yeah, honestly I told the team I take full accountability for that,” Ratcliffe said. “We haven’t trained defensive set plays yet and when it’s an in-swinger, we need to step the line higher. We dropped the line in and then it’s confusion between the space of the goalkeeper and the defenders defending it and everyone just kinda let it go through. So, it was an unfortunate thing, but great for us as coaches because we know we need to work on that and the players have learned a hard lesson now. Because they don’t like conceding goals.”
Touching more on the play by their goalkeepers, Stanford split time between Ryan Campbell and Haley Craig. Both played 45 minutes each while picking up one save apiece. Aside from the goal that Campbell gave up, both did a really nice job in the net. They also got a lot of help from their defense as Pacific had just three shots on goal the entire match.
“Yeah, we’re so fortunate to have two tremendous goalkeepers,” Ratcliffe affirmed. “We trust Ryan and we trust Haley and they both had commanding performances. I know Ryan was disappointed she conceded the goal, but for me like I said, I kinda take the accountability on that, but overall they’re both really good goalkeepers. We’re happy to have them.”
“I think Ryan and Haley both are so big for this team,” Duong added. “They both are obviously amazing keepers, but I think also just amazing leaders from the back line. Great leaders for this team. I think having both of them back there just makes our back line and honestly the whole team feels super secure in our positioning.”
While Pacific’s offense was struggling to get going, the Cardinal offense for the most part was in a nice groove for the entire game with 23 shots and 12 shots on goal to go along with the nine goals on seven assists. Amalie Pianim at 16:31, Elise Evans at 23:42, Lumi Kostmayer at 37:03, Maya Doms at 54:16, and Shae Harvey at 74:09 were the other ones to find the net for the Cardinal in addition to Duong and Aikey.
“I think the main thing was just set the tone, kinda see how all the pieces fit together on the field,” Duong said of what they were most focusing on. “I think we had some great performances tonight. It was great to see younger players step up. Returning players also step up as leaders and just, I thought the team had an all-around great performance.”
Going back to the performances of Duong and Aikey, Ratcliffe had great things to say about both players and how they competed. Aikey scored 10 goals for the team last season, so her finding the net twice in this one wasn’t a surprise. She’s expected to once again be a top scorer for the Cardinal. As for Duong, given that she only scored one goal last season, Ratcliffe was especially excited to see her score the goals that she did.
“Yeah, Katie Duong is the hardest working player on our team,” Ratcliffe said. “Fantastic technical ability. Can score goals, create goals, so happy for her to start the season that she got a couple goals. And then Jasmine Aikey is one of the top players in the country. Very potent striker and not surprised to see her get a couple goals because she’s so potent up front.”
“Well the first one was a great ball in by Joelle [Jung]. She’s great at those,” Duong said of her two goals. “And then Astrid [Wheeler] came in, set me a great ball perfectly on the six.”
During the offseason, Duong worked extremely hard on her game. She’s been focused on many different aspects of her craft. To have a quality match like this to kick things off feels really good for her.
“I’ve been trying to focus on explosiveness and speed a lot,” Duong said. “And then also speed of play in just adding another layer to my game of being more dangerous and more gritty defensively.”
With this match now behind them, the Cardinal look ahead to the regular season. They will open things up with a road trip to Southern California to face San Diego on Thursday, August 17th before facing UC Irvine on Sunday, August 20th.
“Yeah, it’s always a little different on the road,” Ratcliffe said of the upcoming trip. “I think we need to get used to playing on the road and have a professional attitude out there. And it’ll be a good test. I think both teams USD and UC Irvine, we gotta be ready for both those games. So, it should be a good challenge.”
“First road trip to San Diego, the whole team is super excited for that,” Duong added. “I think tonight, super fun night but also kinda got the jitters out, the first game out of the way, so I think we’re excited going into that. Definitely going to go back in, watch this game, figure out what we need to improve on going into the next two games.”
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