The Iowa Hawkeyes found themselves on the wrong end of a flood of goals scored by freshmen in a 5-3 loss to Creighton on a rain-soaked Friday night under the lights at Morrison Stadium.
Four of the 16 fresh faces on second-year Bluejay head coach Ross Paule’s women’s soccer team accounted for four goals and an assist in the match as Callie Hawkins, Taryn Jakubowski, Jaylin Bosak, and Hannah Miller helped lead an attack that produced a 20-13 edge in overall shots and an 11-7 advantage in shots on frame to earn the win in their collegiate debut.
“I thought we were very good in moments of the game with the ball, which is a big change moving forward,” Paule said. “We want to control the ball. We want to attack. We want to be creative, and we want to put our players in dangerous positions. We want to have 20 shots a game and 11 shots on goal. You’re giving yourself a chance to win if you do that.”
Iowa (0-1-0) got into the game a lot quicker than the Bluejays (1-0-0), but a stout defensive effort by the back line — especially North Carolina State transfer Mackenzie Graybill — prevented the Hawkeyes from getting any clean looks in the box.
“It’s hard to pinpoint one of the back four, because they all did a great job,” Paule said. “From ‘Kenzie to [Emily Roll] to [Jaylin Bosak and Gabriela Braga], all four of them did their jobs defensively and stayed tight and compact.
“But ‘Kenzie is a leader by example and she will throw her body in the way to ensure that we don’t give up a shot on goal.”
Most of the back and forth action took place on Creighton’s end of the pitch early on, but Iowa’s aggressive approach managed to produce just two shots in goalkeeper Erin Scott’s direction by the time redshirt junior midfielder Darby Hugunin put the Bluejays on the board with her fourth career goal.
Senior forward Lauren Sullivan made a nice run along the left flank to center a ball into a crowd in front of the Iowa goal. Creighton freshman midfielder Taryn Jakubowski got the first touch on it, but freshman goalkeeper Claire Graves made the initial save before Hugunin came in to take the ball away from a defender and send it into the back of the net, giving the Bluejays a 1-0 lead with 19:21 remaining in the opening half.
Sullivan set up another goal four minutes later when she was taken down by two Hawkeyes just outside the 18-yard box. Freshman midfielder Callie Hawkins drilled the free kick inside the far post to extend the lead to 2-0 with 15:21 left in the half.
It was the first career goal for the Gretna High School standout after leading her team to runner-up finishes in the Nebraska Class B State Title match as a junior and a senior.
“Ross told me to take the kick, and Darby came up to me and told me to hit it on the ground far post,” Hawkins said. “I just nailed it as hard as I could and watched it go in.”
Down 2-0 at halftime, the Hawkeyes flipped the momentum of the match in a hurry to start the second half. Senior defender Rachele Armand and junior midfielder Karly Stuenkel scored goals just over one minute apart to bring the match even at 2-2 with 40:51 left to play in regulation.
Both goals were scored from outside the 18-yard box, with Armand beating Erin Scott with a shot to the lower far corner of the net and Stuenkel going high to the far post just one minute and nine seconds later to tie things up.
That kicked off a wild final 40 minutes as Hawkins answered in the 57th minute when she redirected a point blank shot into the back of the net to put the Bluejays back in front by a score of 3-2.
“On that one I was just trying to get in and do as much as I could to get that goal,” Hawkins said. “I had the mentality that I wanted to score, and the ball happened to be in the right position, so I just knocked it in. Coach talks to us about our mentality when we’re inside the box. It’s really big when you’re inside the box to do everything you can and sacrifice your body to get a goal.”
Freshman right back Jaylin Bosak put that aggressive mentality in the box on display again in the 64th minute. The former Millard West Wildcat made a near post run into the goal box as fellow newcomer Taryn Jakubowski lofted a rebound back towards the Iowa goal. Bosak out-jumped her defender and headed the ball into the back of the net to reclaim the two-goal lead.
“I knew Taryn was going to get to it, because she’s quick,” the Omaha native recalled as she broke down what would eventually stand as the game-winning goal. “I recycled my run and backed up and waited. She played a great, powerful ball into me and I just used all of my strength to jump up and tip it in with my head.”
Freshman forward Kaleigh Haus brought the Hawkeyes back within a goal after her long distance strike found the back of the net with 18:17 still to play. Like the previous two goals allowed by the Bluejays, Haus’ score came from beyond the penalty area.
“I’m not okay with all three of them,” Creighton’s second-year head coach said. “I think we could have prevented all three of them and that’s something that I’m not afraid to say, because I know the group that I have defensively. We can’t give away free shots at the top of the box. I believe that we can do a better job of not allowing that.”
As was the case for most of the match, Creighton’s best defense was their relentless attack that Iowa just could not keep up with in the end. In the 80th minute with her team still holding a one-goal lead, reserve forward Hannah Miller iced the game away for the Bluejays with her first career score.
The freshman from Lenexa, Kan., received a slick touch pass on the run through two Iowa defenders from senior Lauren Sullivan, then fired a point blank shot off Graves, controlled the rebound and chipped it into the net to wrap up a third consecutive season-opening win for the Creighton women’s soccer program.
The Bluejays have won 24 of their last 30 non-conference matches over the last three-plus seasons, including a 9-3 mark since Ross Paule became head coach last season.
“That is a good team that’s going to win a decent amount of games this year, and to get that result against a good team in a great conference is powerful for my young team,” Paule said of Creighton’s second win over the Hawkeyes in seven all-time meetings dating back to 2001.
“I think all the freshmen did a great job. Obviously many of the freshmen made the game-winning plays and the goals, but to be honest I think the whole group complimented each other. I think the freshmen did shine, but then you look at Sully’s work ethic up top, you look Darby’s composure on the ball, and you look at Roll in the back fighting. Those are your leaders, and the great thing about this group is they are young — this was most of their first games [at Creighton] — but it’s something that is great to build on with a game like this, because they showed the potential of what they can do. They’re not anywhere close to where they’re going to get to.”
Creighton’s second match of the season will come against a familiar foe when they host the Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. at Morrison Stadium.
The Bluejays have hooked up with UMKC in each of the past seven years. They currently find themselves on a two-match skid in the series after the Kangaroos handed them their first loss of the season in 2014 and 2015.