When the stakes have been at their highest, the Long Beach State women’s soccer team has always been able to turn to star forward Nadia Link, and Thursday’s Big West Conference semifinal rematch was no exception.
Link delivered the go-ahead goal in the 55th minute to lead the No. 2-seeded 49ers to their second consecutive Big West Conference Tournament final with a 2-0 victory over No. 3 Cal State Northridge at George Allen Field.
“Today, watching us the way we kept the ball, you can just see we were playing Beach soccer again,” Link said of suffering back-to-back losses against Northridge and UC Irvine three weeks ago. “Against [Northridge], we got a chance to show them how we can really play. … We’re all beating to one heart right now and I think that basically sums up our play today.”
For the second year in a row, the ‘Niners (14-5-1) moved past the Matadors (7-10-2) to earn themselves a rematch of last year’s tournament final against No. 1 UCI (14-3-2), which defeated UC Davis, 1-0, in Thursday’s other semifinal. The Beach will travel to Irvine for a noon match at UCI’s Anteater Stadium.
If the 49ers should win Sunday’s championship game, they will secure their second consecutive bid into the NCAA Tournament.
“We wanna play Sunday like we did last year [1-0 victory over UCI] when we earned an automatic qualifier [into the NCAA Tournament],” LBSU head coach Mauricio Ingrassia said. “That’s the only way that I know [to get into the Tournament]. … Obviously, there’s an outside chance [for an at-large bid] should we lose on Sunday, but you don’t want to leave it up to a committee.”
Senior forward Nicole Sweetman sent a lead pass to the box that found Link, who then nailed in a goal from about six yards out to give The Beach a 1-0 edge just 10 minutes into the second period.
“Honestly, it was just surreal,” Link said of the goal in between laughs. “I looked over at Sweetman and I’ve never seen anybody so happy to help a team score. She just said she almost passed out cheering right at the moment, so I mean, it was a good moment for the team and you can just feel it on the field.”
It marked Link’s 15th tally of the season, which moved her into second place for the all-time single-season program record for goals (16) set by Annette Fernandez in 1984.
In addition to her helper, Sweetman iced the match in the 74th minute with her sixth goal of the year. The senior intercepted a deflected pass from a Northridge defender before firing a turnaround shot that sailed past the reach of Matadors goalkeeper Cynthia Jacobo.
“I’ve known Sweetman since she’s was a little girl,” Ingrassia said. “At one point, when she committed to UCLA, she was one of the top forwards in the country at the time, and she would score at will, so I’ve seen that the last 12 years. … If you give her a chance to score, she’s gonna stick it in. … She’s just a pure goal-scorer.”
The Matadors’ best opportunities to score came during the second half. CSUN forward Melissa Fernandez placed a header that sailed just over the crossbar in the 67th minute. Then, with four minutes left to play, Fernandez was wide open as she drilled a shot from the box before LBSU goalkeeper Kaitlyn Gustaves made a diving stop as the ball deflected off her chest.
“[The Matadors] are a very good possession-oriented team,” Ingrassia said. “As you saw, they played from start to finish.”
The ‘Niners played tentative throughout the first half as they managed to put up as many as seven shots without producing a single goal, however, LBSU eventually loosened up in the second half. Five of its eight shots in the second period came on target as LBSU took control of the tempo. The Matadors had just two shots on goal in the second half.
“We talked about how we needed to adjust how we rotated on our midfield,” Ingrassia said. “There’s a couple times [the Matadors] caught us off-balance, so we were just trying to ride that wave they threw at us in the first half. … The team just came back [in the second period] with total focus to execute. “They worked extremely hard in the second half to contest the possession and I thought the girls did a fantastic job today.”
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