Today won’t mark the first meeting of the season against a highly-ranked team for the No. 1 UCLA women’s soccer team, but this time around, the stakes are higher and the Bruins won’t be able to enjoy the comfort of playing at Drake Stadium.
In one of its biggest games of the season thus far, the Bruins (9-1-2, 2-0-0 Pac-10) will be taking on No. 2 Stanford (10-1-1, 1-0-0 Pac-10) in Palo Alto, a matchup that will have a great impact on the conference championship.
“It’s going to be a great game,” senior forward Danesha Adams said. “No. 1 and No. 2 in the country ““ anyone lives for that game.
“We’ve struggled on the road, so it’s going to be a big test for us as a team to face the No. 2 team in the country and keep our standing.”
UCLA played its first game of the season on the road, losing to Texas 2-1, before turning its season around and remaining unbeaten in southern California.
However, the Bruins will be up for the challenge of traveling north to take on the Cardinals; a game against them will measure how they stack up against another team that received first-place votes in the most recent NSCAA/adidas poll.
“We want to be evaluated against the best, and going up to take Stanford on Friday, that’s exactly what we’re going to get,” assistant coach B.J. Snow said. “It’ll be a good test to see where we’re at.”
Snow has been filling in for coach Jill Ellis for the past week while Ellis has been on a scouting trip in China to recruit for the U-20 World Championships.
But Ellis will rejoin the Bruins on Friday as well as on Sunday afternoon when the Bruins take on another nationally ranked team in No. 19 Cal (8-3-0, 0-1-0 Pac-10).
“This weekend is one of the biggest weekends for us this season,” senior forward Alma Playle said. “Our ultimate goal is to just take every game one at a time and we’ll get the final result we want if we approach it that way.”
The team is aware of the stakes that are on the table in this series of games against the Bay Area schools, as it looks to capture a record fifth straight Pac-10 championship under the guidance of Ellis.
Since its establishment in 1993, Stanford and UCLA have either won or held a share of the conference title every year, with the exception of one, with UCLA winning seven and Stanford capturing five.
“It’s always hard to defend a championship in the Pac-10 and they’re probably one of the top teams in the Pac-10 so we have to take care of our job or they could pass us up,” junior midfielder McCall Zerboni said.
Sophomore defender Erin Hardy, who has sat out of the Bruins’ lineup since Sep. 16 due to a sprained lateral collateral ligament, may make a return to the field this weekend to help prevent the Bruins from falling in the conference standings. Hardy has slowly begun practicing with the team over the past week, making sure not to return too early to avoid further injury to her right knee.
In her absence, however, sophomore Dea Cook and junior Catherine Calvert, have filled in and helped the Bruin backline limit opponents to just three goals in the past six games, including back-to-back shutouts to open up conference play.
“We’re definitely capable of beating both teams this weekend,” Cook said. “We just have to go out and play with intensity and connect and I feel like we’re at the point where we now know how to do that.”
Having attained the nation’s top ranking with their play over the past several weeks, the Bruins have also added another item to their agenda, as they now look to maintain their ranking and make a strong run into the College Cup at the end of the season.
Even with a target on their backs, UCLA will enter tonight’s matchup unfazed, looking to prove they can once again triumph against a highly-ranked opponent.
“We want to stay the best team in the world,” Adams said. “We want to be the team everyone wants to beat. So now we have to prove that that’s really what we’re about.”
SIBLING RIVALRY: For Bruin freshman midfielder Dana Wall, tonight’s game against Stanford will bring bragging rights of a different sort, as her older sister, April, is a senior defender for the Cardinal.
The Wall sisters are from Scottsdale, Ariz. where they played for Chaparral High School before moving to California to play for their respective schools.
TELEVISED REPLAY: UCLA’s most recent victory, a 3-0 rout of Oregon, is currently being aired on television by several Fox Sports Net affiliates.
The game will be aired at noon today on FSN Prime Ticket and again at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning.