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Women’s soccer notches 3rd win in a row after defeating Utah

Freshman forward Mia Fishel scored both goals in No. 22 UCLA women’s soccer’s win over Utah on Sunday. Fishel has now tallied seven goals this season, making her the Bruins’ leading scorer so far. (Daanish Bhatti/Daily Bruin)

Women's Soccer


Utah0
No. 22 UCLA2

By Cassidy Hunt

Oct. 14, 2019 12:47 a.m.

Mia Fishel outscored the Utes all by herself.

The freshman forward scored both of No. 22 UCLA women’s soccer’s (9-3-1, 3-2 Pac-12) goals in its 2-0 victory over Utah (6-5-3, 1-2-2) on Sunday. With the win, the Bruins have extended their winning streak to three after dropping their first two conference matches.

“(Utah) tried to play through us, which is shocking, because teams usually try to kick it over and play the physical battle,” Fishel said. “But we brought it back. We battled it out and stuck to our game plan and we came through.”

Fishel’s first goal did not come until the 31st minute, when junior forward Ashley Sanchez sent the ball across the penalty box to senior defender Kaiya McCullough, who found Fishel near the right goalpost. Fishel’s shot found the bottom right corner of the net before the Utah goalkeeper could get her hands on the ball.

In the 51st minute, Fishel found the back of the net again when she followed up on a deflection off of a Utah defender and sent the ball to the lower left corner. Utah goalkeeper Carly Nelson jumped to save it but was not there in time.

“I had to stay patient and make sure that I was focused enough to score,” Fishel said. “I wanted to bring my team up because we have been battling so much on the field, and scoring goals obviously makes us so happy. I’m just glad I could do it.”

Nine of the Bruins’ 17 shots were on target. Junior defender Delanie Sheehan hit the post twice, and senior defender Sunny Dunphy hit one on the crossbar.

Coach Amanda Cromwell said the Bruins had been working on creating more chances, so she was glad to see that UCLA’s on-goal percentage was over 50%.

“We had a great (shooting) percentage,” Cromwell said. “Any time we’re near 50% on goal, that’s awesome. That’s what we want to do – make their keepers make saves, and the last two games the keepers have made some amazing saves.”

With two goals on the night, Fishel took the sole spot atop the Bruins’ scoring leaderboard this season with seven. Sanchez, who has scored five goals this season and was tied with Fishel in scoring, recorded the most shots in Sunday’s match.

But amid the clean sheet victory, UCLA still picked up a loss.

After just three minutes of gameplay, junior midfielder Marley Canales went down with a knee injury that caused her to be carried off the field. She did not return for the remainder of the match and went to the halftime meeting on crutches.

“Any time anyone on our team gets hurt, we all feel it as if we were them,” said redshirt senior Anika Rodriguez. “Seeing (Canales) go down was really hard for us. We had to collect ourselves and figure out how to move forward.”

UCLA will be on the road later this week when they take on No. 2 Stanford (12-1, 5-0) on Saturday night in Palo Alto.

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Cassidy Hunt | Sports staff
Hunt is currently a Sports staff writer on the softball and women's soccer beats. She was previously a reporter on the gymnastics, women's water polo and swim & dive beats.
Hunt is currently a Sports staff writer on the softball and women's soccer beats. She was previously a reporter on the gymnastics, women's water polo and swim & dive beats.
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