Only six minutes into Boston College’s women’s soccer game against Grambling State, Sydney Segalla stormed toward Grambling State’s goal.
The right sideline was wide open for Segalla, who snuck a crossing pass through the defense and into the boot of Paige Peltier.
Peltier had only the goalkeeper in front of her and promptly buried the ball in the net.
It would take some time for the Eagles’ offense to hit their stride after the early goal, but the Eagles eventually netted four additional goals.
With the 5–0 win, Boston College (8–2–1, 0–1–1 Atlantic Coast) defeated Grambling State (2–6–3), in a game where the Eagles’ offense dominated possession.
The Eagles spent most of the game applying pressure on offense, taking twenty-four shots against Grambling State’s three shots.
“Yeah, you know, I think we were working pretty hard all night,” BC head coach Chris Watkins.
“I was proud of our effort. It’s not easy to get up game after game after game, and our ladies did a good job of that today. I think it was mostly just– we were just going to keep going, and I think we wore them out over time, but happy with scoring five goals in any Division One game, and so we’ll be happy with this tonight.”
Late in the first half, the Eagles won the game’s lone penalty kick after Aislin Streicek was tripped up by Aubrey Salazar. Streicek’s low-line drive was saved on the dive by Grambling keeper Madison Covey-Taylor.
The Eagles created offensive pressure with the amount of corner kicks they won. BC struck the ball well in numerous tries but became stifled by a crowded penalty box. BC finally scored after a corner kick with a right-foot volley by Ashley Roberts with thirteen minutes remaining. Roberts’ goal ended what was an 0-for-15 on corner kick tries.
“Yeah, we, you know, we were at their end line in the first half– we were at their end line 16 times for crosses, and we were one-for-16,” Watkins said. “You like to score one out of seven, um, so that’s it. We’ve got some things to work on, plenty of things to work on, but tonight, everybody left the field healthy, and I think we got a little bit better in the offensive third tonight, so we’ll take it as a good night.”
Grambling State’s best scoring chance came when Aria Whitney sent a cross to the left goalpost in the 57th minute. The ball arrived at the post just before Alana Aiken could get to it and resulted in a goal kick for BC.
“We have a goal to win the ball back in our offensive half more than our defensive half,” Watkins said. “Today, that certainly happened. But against– you know, we’ve got top 10 teams coming here pretty quick. We have to be really sharp defensively with our forwards, with our midfielders right when we lose the ball. And so that was the focus of today in our pregame was to make sure we won the ball back in good places. They did a good job of that today, and that created a short field and kept them away from our goal.”
BC was quick to counter Grambling State’s offensive push with their own. Sydney Segalla and Ava Lung were able to converge on an Emily Sapienza pass in wide open space. Segalla yielded to Lung and watched Lung as she toed the ball into the bottom-left corner.
“We played a couple conference games already. We’ve got to be, we’ve got to believe in ourselves a little bit more,” Watkins said. “You know, we were picked, you know, close to the bottom of the conference right? And so I think sometimes our girls think, well, that’s who we are. And we’ve got to be a little bit more confident going into games, we’ve got to believe in ourselves a little bit more and that’s our job as coaches, to make sure they step on the field and know we can win.”
Leave a Reply