On Sunday, No. 2 Stanford women’s soccer defeated UC Irvine 3-0 to win their regular season home opener. Stanford forwards Maryn Wolf, Andrea Kitahata, and Jaden Thomas scored for the Cardinal while Haley Craig was the winning goalkeeper in the net, playing 81:05. Stanford improves to 2-0-0 on the season while UC Irvine falls to 1-1-0.
BOX SCORE: Stanford vs. UC Irvine-Sunday, August 18th
“Yeah, really good team win, UC Irvine is always a strong opponent,” Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe said after the match. “So, happy that we got three goals and yeah, overall just a really solid performance.”
Stanford got on the board quickly in this one as Maryn Wolf found the top center of the goal off her right foot courtesy of an assist from Andrea Kitahata and Shae Harvey at the 7:13 mark. This gave Stanford an early 1-0 lead.
“Yeah, Maryn, I mean she was in the right place at the right time,” Ratcliffe said of Wolf’s goal. “But we’ve been talking about that, too of creating chances. But can we put them away? And sometimes it’s just a gritty goal. So we had a really good shot on goal. I think it was Andrea Kitahata, hit a really good strike on goal, big time save, and then Maryn was there for the follow up and smashed it home. So, full credit to Maryn for being active and being ready for it.”
Stanford would not score the rest of the half, but they did have six more shots for a total of eight on the half and three corner kicks, doing a nice job of applying pressure on UC Irvine. Irvine in contrast had just two shots on the half and zero corner kicks, unable to apply the same level of pressure. At the very end of the half, Erica Grilione picked up a yellow card for Stanford, the first of the match for either side.
“It was finish our chances,” Ratcliffe said of what his message to the team was at halftime. “We need to be more ruthless in front of goal. Because I thought in the first half we could have scored more and we let them kind of hang around and then it was still a test for us. One-zero margin is not enough. So it was more just keep your foot on the accelerator and let’s keep pressing and keep going and finish our chances. But I thought our possession was good. We were moving the ball well. We just needed the final pass and the final finish.”
“I think the message was finish them,” Thomas added. “We were already up 1-0 and there’s no reason to keep them in the game any longer. So to like keep attacking them and finish. Put the game away.”
Stanford quickly scored in the second half as Andrea Kitahata was fouled at the 47:03 mark, setting up a penalty shot. Kitahata found the bottom left of the net, getting the ball past UC Irvine’s goalkeeper Ashley Naylor. With a 2-0 lead, Stanford now had all the momentum.
“Yeah, we haven’t done a ton,” Ratcliffe admitted when asked how much time they spend on penalty kicks. “In fairness to Andrea, I think she’s done a great job of doing a little extra work and working on PKs. Sometimes they stay after training and do that. So I’m really happy she does so you could see her confidence and how she slotted away. So that was great that she stepped up.”
UC Irvine would quickly go on the offensive and force a corner kick at 48:11, unable to capitalize. Irvine would have another corner kick at 61:49, once again unable to score. Try as they might, the Anteaters were just not able to get on the scoreboard. Stanford goalkeeper Haley Craig a major reason why.
“Yeah, Haley’s developed as a player during her time at Stanford,” Ratcliffe said of Craig. “Very confident goalkeeper and doing exceptionally well for herself. So I’m happy to see her getting her time in the light here and playing a lot of minutes.”
The Cardinal on the other hand were able to add one more goal to their tally as freshman Jaden Thomas scored her first career goal off an assist from Andrea Kitahata at the 74:03 mark. Kitahata had just fired a shot that was saved by Irvine only for the ball to squirt out to the right side of the goal where Thomas was able to clean up and kick the ball into the top center of the goal off her right foot. That made it a 3-0 lead.
“I feel like it was honestly really chaotic,” Thomas said of her goal. “I don’t really remember much. I just remember Paul always saying like there’s a loose ball make sure you’re switched on and finish it. And that was kind of just like oh, I’m in the box it’s a loose ball. It was more just like exciting getting the nerves out.
“I think it was like as Paul likes to say opening the bank account. So finally getting to start and open my bank account for the season and my career here at Stanford was really exciting.”
“Yeah, Jaden is a really good player,” Ratcliffe said. “She has a presence up front. If she turns and she faces up, she can smash a goal. So I think she’s really potent and will really help the team a lot this season.”
From there, Stanford would win 3-0 as UC Irvine never was able to find the back of the net. It was a hard fought win for Stanford and one where they can feel good knowing they got a good distribution of goals throughout the afternoon.
“We have a lot of good players, a lot of talented players,” Ratcliffe said of the goal distribution. “We can score from all areas of the field. So, I’m happy to see different players stepping up and contributing and that’s something that we were talking about after our last game that we need to get more clinical in the final third in our finishing, so to get three was really positive.”
For Stanford, this is a good win. UC Irvine is a quality team that upset UCLA in the NCAA tournament a year ago. To win convincingly over them and put up multiple goals has to feel good. Especially coming off a 1-0 win at San Francisco earlier in the week.
“It honestly feels amazing,” Thomas said of getting the win. “Kinda being a freshman being able to continue the legacy of undefeated for I think two and half years it is here at home at Cagan is pretty cool…We did a lot of pre-scout on them and I think a big thing was exploiting what they give us and switching the ball a lot and finding those open players and I feel like that was the biggest thing we tried to do today…Honestly, the energy was euphoric and it was super cool and I’m glad to get the first one under my belt and excited for many more to come.”
More broadly speaking, Stanford is feeling good about the team they have. They’re coming off a run to the College Cup final and are excited to be in the ACC, which outside of the Pac-12 has been the top conference in college soccer for the past several seasons.
“Really good,” Ratcliffe said of how they’re feeling. “I think we learned a lot of lessons from last year. We grew a lot last year. We still have the nucleus from the season before and now we’ve added some really dynamic young players that are going to grow into this team and grow into our tactical set up. So, yeah. I’m really happy with the group. It’s a fun team to work with.”
“Honestly, I gotta say it’s been the team and the culture,” Thomas said of what she’s most enjoyed about being on the team. “Honestly, it’s been probably the best team I’ve ever played for and played with and I’ve really enjoyed the girls and like how welcoming they’ve all been.”
Up next for Stanford is a road match at San Diego State on Thursday, August 22nd. That will kick off at 7:00 PM PT on Mountain West Network.
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