After a rocky start to the season, the Georgetown women’s soccer team (10-4-0, 4-2-0 Big East) defeated conference rival Pittsburgh 6-0 on North Kehoe Field this past Sunday. The six-goal explosion was a scoring high for the Hoyas this season, with senior forward Camille Trujillo contributing two to bring her career goal tally to 28, enough for second on the Hoyas’ all-time list.
Despite the blowout, the weekend was not without its blemishes. The women fell to West Virginia 3-1 on Friday, a disappointing result after the team out-shot the Mountaineers 21-13 in the second half.
Head coach Dave Nolan said he recognized the match was a missed opportunity against an import conference foe.
“I’d like to think the feel we can create changes against anybody,” Nolan said. “But I think they also now have to recognize that you got to come out from the first minute…you need leadership and you need personality.”
The team clearly took the lessons he gave them to heart, putting on their best performance against Pittsburgh with an aggressive outlook early, opening the scoring just 24 seconds into the game.
Trujillo, whose deadly finishing has propelled the Hoyas for much of the season, believes the team can still learn from their prior mistakes even after the big win.
“I feel that the season has gone fairly well,” she wrote in an email. “There were some games that I think we could have won, but we have learned from the mistakes made in those games and focus on the games ahead. We can’t dwell on results in the past; we just need to do our best in the games remaining.”
In addition to Trujillo’s stellar play, fellow senior Ingrid Wells added a goal and an assist to become the first Hoya to score 100 points in a career.
The milestone is not Wells’s first major accomplishment during her career in the blue and gray. The redshirt midfielder took off what would have been her sophomore year to play with the United States Under-20 Women’s National Team, as they made it to the 2008 FIFA Under-20 World Cup. This past Sunday, Wells flew out to California to participate in the U.S. National Team Camp.
The underclassmen will have big shoes to fill once these key players graduate, but so far they seem up to the challenge. Freshman Daphne Corboz showed promise for the future, producing dangerous crosses during both the West Virginia and Pitt games.
Such performances have Trujillo confident in the underclassmen and their future contributions to the program.
“The younger players have been doing a phenomenal job stepping up for the team,” she wrote. “I have seen individuals’ confidence increase when they step on the field due to their efforts in practices.”
The Hoyas’ dominant victory should not be overstated, though. The Panthers are just 1-9-4 overall, but Trujillo is still proud of her team’s response to the frustrating opening to the weekend.
“I thought we played very well as a team after a tough loss against West Virginia,” Trujillo wrote. “We responded to the loss in a positive manner and we were able to get a great result.“
The Hoyas will look for a repeat performance against the Cincinnati Bearcats on Friday. At 5-6-4, Cincinnati’s record suggests the Hoyas will come in as the heavy favorites, especially having won convincingly last year 3-1. Kickoff is slated for 3 p.m. on North Kehoe Field.
