The Stanford-UCLA rivalry makes different people do different
things.
Some laugh. Others cry. Still others reminisce about their
Stanford applications that just weren’t quite good
enough.
But as the UCLA women’s soccer team prepares to take on
Stanford tonight in Palo Alto, the rivalry has compelled the team
to do something entirely different.
“We’re salivating,” coach Jill Ellis said.
Last season, Stanford handed UCLA its only Pac-10 loss, and went
on to win the conference with a perfect 9-0 record.
“Honestly, in the back of our minds is last year,”
Ellis said. “We lost to them 1-0, and we didn’t win the
Pac-10.”
This year, the Bruins are relishing the chance to wrestle
conference supremacy away from the Cardinals. And so far this
season, everything seems in order for the Bruins to do just
that.
No. 3 UCLA (9-1-2, 2-0 Pac-10) has been dominant as usual.
Stanford, on the other hand, hasn’t been in typical form.
The unranked Cardinal (6-6-1, 1-1 Pac-10) enter today’s
game in an unfamiliar position ““ coming off a conference
loss. Last Sunday, Arizona State handed Stanford its first Pac-10
loss since 2001 in a 1-0 defeat on the road. Under new coach Paul
Ratcliffe, it’s certainly clear that this is not the same
team that went 21-2 last year and outscored its opponents 55-4.
However, Ellis and her team doesn’t buy the
“down-year” stuff.
“Even though Stanford hasn’t had great results so
far this year, they’re still a great team,” senior
Nandi Pryce said. “They’re well- coached and we know
they’ll come out gunning for us.”
“It’s Stanford,” Ellis said. “On any day
they’re good enough to beat you. And we’ll respect
that.”
The Bruins will also respect Nicole Barnhart, Stanford’s
All-American goalkeeper.
They respect her so much, in fact, that Ellis has had her team
practicing a strategy strictly to deal with Barnhart.
“She’s a world-class goalkeeper,” Ellis said.
“She played unbelievably for them last year.
“She’ll pretty much own the six-yard box. So our
focus is to be really aggressive in the penalty box and to get to
the end line and take her out of the equation.”
UCLA’s game plan is to send passes into the box on the
ground rather than allow Barnhart to collect balls in the air.
On the offensive end, senior co-captain Allyson Marquand leads
the Cardinal with six goals.
Though Stanford is a huge game for the Bruins, the team’s
weekend doesn’t end Friday night. On Sunday, UCLA will head
across the bay to face California (6-3-3, 1-1 Pac-10), another
dangerous team.
“Cal is the team that always worries me,” Ellis
said. “They’re not superstars, but they have a very
solid front-to-back team. They’ll be a handful for
us.”
But no matter how good Cal is, Stanford always means just a
little bit more. In fact, in the nine years women’s soccer
has been played in the Pac-10, Stanford and UCLA have combined for
eight titles.
“I’m pleased that we have Stanford first because it
would be tough to play Cal knowing that we have Stanford
coming,” Ellis said. “It’s a good sequence for
us.”