The Creighton Bluejays and South Dakota Coyotes began their 2015 women’s soccer seasons with more than 70 minutes of scoreless play. That was until Creighton junior center back Ylenia Sachau’s free kick from just inside 30 yards found the back of the net to put the Bluejays on the board. Sachau’s second-half goal was the only one scored by either side under the bright lights of Morrison Stadium on Friday night as Creighton (1-0-0) finished their first game under new head coach Ross Paule with a 1-0 shutout victory against the visiting Coyotes (0-1-0).
The Bluejays out-shot South Dakota, 11-7, on the evening, and finished with a 3-2 edge in corner kicks in a chippy 2015 debut that saw each team receive a pair of yellow cards. Despite some tense moments that tested the Creighton defense midway through the first half, they were able to settle into a rhythm and left their coach pleased with the performance in their first game.
“Overall it was [a very good performance],” Creighton head coach Ross Paule said. “The team shape was good for the majority of the game. I thought it looked like we were a team that hasn’t had many opportunities to play enough games to get into game fitness … but for a first game I couldn’t be happier for [the players]. They did everything we asked. They communicated very well with each other.”
South Dakota tested Creighton true freshman goalkeeper Erin Scott a couple times in the first half while she got comfortable communicating with her back line. In the 10th minute, Coyotes junior forward Corey Strang found space inside the 18-yard box and fired a shot low towards the left corner of the goal. Scott dove to her right and snagged the shot with two hands to keep the match scoreless. In the 20th minute, the Bluejays lucked out when Strang fired a shot off the post. Then in 21st minute, a head’s up play by Scott preserved the shutout once again. Senior forward, and South Dakota’s top returning goal scorer, Taylor Nivala entered a corner kick from the left side of the pitch. The ball landed in front of Scott and deflected behind her towards the goal. She quickly turned and dove towards the end line to secure the ball before it crossed over.
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The early action might have helped Scott settle into the match. After turning away those scoring chances, she appeared to gain confidence and started to come off her line and communicate with her back line with more conviction.
“There were a lot of nerves all day, but once we got on the field, and I was with the team I was able to relax a lot more,” Scott said. “The easy saves that I know how to make, that are just technical really help out, because it just helps with the confidence boost. It feels good to come off the field with a shutout.”
After the match, and his first win as a collegiate head coach, Ross Paule was left satisfied after his keeper became the first freshman to earn a clean sheet in a season opener for Creighton women’s soccer since at least 1998.
“How can you complain when you get a shutout?” Paule said. “We were a little bit lucky on the post one time, but overall she commanded the box very well, which is what I ask, and she slowed the game down when it needed to be slowed down.”
After watching their defense hold out under pressure the Creighton attack applied some of their own. In the 12th minute, junior forward Lauren Sullivan broke free on a nice run up the middle and just lost out on a race to the ball with South Dakota freshman goalkeeper Parker Rytz in the middle of the 18-yard box. Sullivan was maybe one more step away from having a chance to chip the keeper and put a ball in the goal, but Rytz dove on top of it just in time.
Just before halftime, Sullivan created a scoring chance for freshman forward Kaira Houser with a fancy back-footed, no-look touch into the 18-yard box. Rytz came off her line once again and deflected the ball off of Houser, who was charging towards her. The ball bounced off the Bluejay freshman and over the end line for a goal kick.
Houser, who came off the bench in the 32nd minute, continued to create problems, however, for South Dakota’s back line with strong runs and nifty ball skills. In the 71st minute she drew a foul on the right flank, about 30 yards away from the goal. That set the stage for Sachau’s free kick. The German center back lined up her shot, took one look back at her head coach for a quick instruction, and fired a bomb high into the back of the net to break the scoreless tie.
For Sachau, who played all 90 minutes for the first time in her career, her 7th goal as a Creighton Bluejay, and first game-winnner, was a product of lots of training and one final bit of advice from her head coach prior to taking the kick.
“We worked a lot in practices and I knew I could hit the ball like that,” Sachau said. “We know from that position I’d rather drill it in the goal than try to curb it, because then I usually shank the ball. Ross told me — you can see it, I turn around and look for him — he said go as hard as you can. I saw the wall was kind of far over and the goal was wide open to me basically. I just decided to take the shot. Even if the goalie got it she was probably going to deflect it and all our players would run in, so I hit it as hard as I could and it worked out.”
Other than Sachau, no one probably got more excitement out of seeing that ball hit the net than her head coach.
“I was so excited. I’ll tell you what, I’ve always loved free kick goals, but that was a special goal,” Paule said. “For the first goal for us this season, for the first goal for me as a coach for Creighton it was an unbelievable feeling. I felt like I scored the goal, but I can’t take the credit for anything; Ylenia works on that on her own, she puts in the effort, and you can tell. It’s one of her goals for the season. We set goals for ourselves and she has a number of goals that she wants to score on free kicks. Tonight was one of them and there are going to be some more.”
Prior to scoring the goal, the native of Bremen, Germany was probably already on her way to a woman of the match award. Playing her first game as a center back and playing every minute of the match, she made timely tackles, cleared away dangerous chances for South Dakota, and helped to link her freshman keeper with the rest of the defense thanks to her communication.
“I look at ‘Lenny’ as one of those very solid, consistent players, and that’s what she was today,” Paule said. “Just a main force for us in the back. She’s a player that is going to be dangerous on the set pieces. She spreads the ball really well throughout the team, and she’s able to play the longer, driven ball with purpose. It’s great to have somebody like that in the back line that has that confidence, and has the presence when she goes into tackles.”
The win improved Creighton to 14-11-2 all-time in season openers and moved their overall record against South Dakota to 9-0-0. The Bluejays will get a day to recover before hitting the road to take on the University of Missouri-Kansas City (0-1-0) on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. (CST).
The Kangaroos fell 1-0 at Drake on Friday night. Last season they ended Creighton’s nation-leading 14-match, non-conference winning streak in Omaha by a score of 2-0.