Women’s Soccer ready for tough tests vs. LSUS, A&M-Texarkana

The UHV Women's Soccer team learned a lot about itself over the weekend.

The Jaguars fell behind by two goals at Jarvis Christian with 20 minutes left in Saturday's Red River Athletic Conference match and had to find a way to rally back to avoid their first loss of the season.

Goals from Noa Txintxurreta, Kyleigh Spree-Kolos and Estelle Flanagan in the final 12 minutes gave UHV (5-0, 2-0) the win and marked the program's best-ever start to the season. It also signaled the team's mental strength this year behind a strong group of veteran players.

"I think, since we have such an older group, we're able to pick up the underclassmen and say, 'This is how we do things,'" Flanagan said. "This is how it should be for us this season. If we're down a goal, we don't want to take that. We need to be able to battle back and we proved that this weekend.

Now, UHV will look to continue its hot streak when it hosts LSU Shreveport (5-2, 2-0) on Thursday and Texas A&M-Texarkana (6-0, 2-0) on Saturday. These teams are three of the four teams in the RRAC to sweep their opening matches of conference play.

It's no secret these will be two of the toughest games the Jaguars will play this season.

All three teams boast Top 3 defenses in the conference with TAMUT ranking first in Goals Allowed Average (0.50), UHV ranking second (0.80) and LSUS ranking third (1.14).

The Pilots and Eagles also boast some of the strongest offenses in the conference, scoring an average of 2.71 and five goals per game, respectively. Those marks rank sixth and first in the RRAC.

The Jaguars rank fourth in the conference with an average of 3.2 goals per game after outscoring Texas College and Jarvis Christian 11-3 last week.

"We've got to prepare for the teams coming in this week," said head coach Adrian Rigby. "The competition will be good. We'll put together our gameplan, but we have to focus on ourselves and what we've done well at this point in the season. After that, the game will take care of itself."

The Jaguars have been strong up front this season.

Spree-Kolos' team-leading four goals ranks seventh in the conference. Meanwhile, UHV has featured 11 different goal scorers this season and averages 18.2 shots per game.

"We're just all kind of connected like a family," said junior forward Rosa Reyes, who picked up an assist on Saturday. "Mentally, that's where we are. We're all here for the same reasons. We all want to win."

UHV trails LSU Shreveport 1-7-2 in the all-time series after a scoreless draw last year, and 3-5 against A&M-Texarkana.

Saturday's game against the Eagles will also be UHV's Youth Soccer Appreciation Weekend. All kids 12 and under wearing their youth soccer jersey gets in free.