No. 8 Texas A&M women's soccer defeats Oklahoma 3-1
The No. 8 ranked Aggies stretched their win streak to five games after a hard fought 3-1 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. Aggies Ally Watt and Grace Piper scored for A&M, and Hailey Davidson pitched in the lone goal for the Sooners.
With the Aggies off to a slow start, Davidson took advantage and scored a strike down the middle of the six yard box assisted by Kristina O'Donnell. This was the first time this season that the Aggies were down at the end of the first half.
"(At the half) we talked about holding each other accountable. We didn't think that we worked hard enough all around the game. We just needed to pick up our pace," commented A&M head coach G Guerrieri.
They did exactly that in the second half. In the 46th minute Grace Piper scored on a header, assisted by Kendall Ritchie and Kendall Bates, that would tie the game up at 1.
"No one works harder than (Piper), no one is more coachable than she is. It's great to see kids score and it's great to see the joy of their celebration after," said coach Guerrieri regarding Piper.
But she wasn't done yet. She scored on another header in a swarm of Sooners in the 56th minute of the game. This time she was assisted on a corner kick from Asdis Halldorsdottir.
"It was a frustrating first half. Just to go into the locker room and regroup really said a lot about the team. Those were team goals, they didn't come from one person," Piper said.
After her early troubles Ally Watt secured the Aggies' lead on a strike assisted by Piper in the 63rd, landing her fifth goal in five games this season.
The Aggies made history tonight. They became the first A&M soccer team to begin the season 5-0 since 1999.
"It's kind of funny. We didn't really think about it at all and today our coaches were telling us to be confident. We're definetly very proud of that going forward and we're going to work harder," said Piper.
The Aggies will look to ride their momentum at home against a very talented 9th ranked Santa Clara team at 6 p.m. on Sunday, September 2nd.
