UCLA women’s soccer to take on coach Margueritte Aozasa’s alma mater Santa Clara

Margueritte Aozasa is going home.

No. 6 UCLA women’s soccer (1-0) will face off with Cal State Northridge (1-1) on Thursday at home before traveling up north to take on Santa Clara (1-1) on Sunday. Prior to her coaching career, Aozasa was a four-year starter for the Broncos from 2008 to 2011.

The first-year head coach said she is looking forward to being on the opposite sideline of her former coach, Jerry Smith, who is entering his 36th season in Santa Clara.

“What’s fun to me about playing Santa Clara is it’s the exact same coaching staff that I played for,” Aozasa said. “Jerry was obviously super supportive. He’s been one of my mentors now for years, and as soon as I got the job, we were already talking about this game.”

Santa Clara won the national championship in 2020, followed by a final four appearance last season. The Bruins defeated the Broncos in the regular season last year in a 1-0 triumph, a game that was highlighted by a career-high-tying nine saves from graduate student goalkeeper Lauren Brzykcy.

Although freshman midfielder Ally Lemos wasn’t a part of the game against Santa Clara last season, she said the Bruins are ready for another battle against the Broncos.

“Santa Clara’s going to be a great game,” Lemos said. “We’re here to win, and we’re here to prove that we’re good enough to win a national championship, and we all know it starts now.”

Prior to taking on their coach’s alma mater, the Bruins must first take on CSUN. The Matadors – whom the Bruins defeated 3-0 last season – started their 2022 season with an 8-0 defeat to then-No. 17 Pepperdine.

Nevertheless, Aozasa said the Bruins are looking at each game the same and are not trying to get ahead of themselves.

“We have to take things game by game. What we don’t want to do is fall into the trap of overlooking CSUN,” Aozasa said. “We’ve been preparing to face CSUN. We’ll use the weekend to prepare for Santa Clara, but most importantly, we just got to take care of business on Thursday.”

Sunday’s match will be the first true test of the season for the Bruins before they travel across the country the following week to face the gauntlet that is No. 5 Duke and No. 1 North Carolina.

Freshman forward/midfielder Ellie Walbruch said the Bruins will use these next two games to prepare for their trip out east.

“Both of them are very important games, especially (since we’re) getting ready for the two big games when we travel to North Carolina,” Walbruch said. “Just going out and for both games having the same mentality is going to be huge.”

UCLA will kickoff at 4 p.m. and 1 p.m. on Thursday and Sunday, respectively.