The Massachusetts women’s soccer team crossed the .500 threshold for the first time of the 2024 season on Thursday afternoon, dominating the Northeastern Huskies en route to a 4-0 victory. After starting the season 0-2, the Minutewomen (3-2-1) are 3-0-1 in their last four games, while keeping their home record unscathed.
After a dominant performance on both sides of the ball in the first half, UMass carried a 2-0 lead into the second half. Both teams took about 10 minutes to get their feet wet coming out of the break, but once the Minutewomen hit their stride again in the second half, the scoring continued to come in waves.
Ella Curry was the unlikely beneficiary of the Minutewomen’s resurgence on offense in the second half, as she picked up her first goal of the new campaign and first since the 2022 season in the 64th minute.
Curry lined up to take a corner kick for UMass while Bella Recinos kept close to the ball in the corner. Curry tapped the corner kick into Recinos, who quickly finished a give-and-go with Curry as she saw a Husky (0-3-2) defender approaching. Curry attempted what looked to be a cross, but she didn’t land it in the center of the box for her teammates to attack; she instead lofted it perfectly over Northeastern goalkeeper Eliza Teplow’s head and right into the net.
Ashley Lamond kept the second half scoring going just three minutes later, when she followed Karina Groff up the field on a rush. Groff, on a partial break, sent a bullet of a shot at Teplow that was fended off nicely, but Lamond beat her defender to the rebound and tapped in the Minutewomen’s fourth and final goal of the game.
“They love to play for each other; they love to set each other up,” UMass head coach Jason Dowiak said. “All the goals came in different ways, so it’s also just players creating things for other people and then players that are following up in those resolving moments if it doesn’t go in on the first chance.
“The group is synced, I don’t think we’ve seen a group that we’ve had in the last seven years be this connected and this aware of each other. It felt like [Thursday], even when we missed passes they found somebody else, it was cool to see.”
Although the offense was the clear and obvious strength for UMass on Thursday afternoon, the back end was also heavily fortified by the defense and goalkeeper Bella Mendoza who pitched her third shutout of the season.
“We were just so good in possession it was just hard for [Northeastern] to find opportunities and we were so switched on when they did try to play forward,” Dowiak said. “I thought [Hannah Peric] and [Curry] started out the game unbelievable, as they have been and set the tone.”
Recinos and Chandler Pedolzky scored their third and second respective goals of the season in the first half, with Pedolzky assisting the former while her sister Emma aided in the latter. Recinos also had a multi-point game with her assist on the Curry goal in the second half.
The Minutewomen have been on a hot streak in the last two weeks, a trend that Dowiak and his coaching staff are trying to keep alive as conference play approaches in just two weeks.
“Before the game, in our team meeting, we talked about proving that we can be consistent for our fourth game in a row,” Dowiak said. “We’d been very good in the last three games, we’ve started well, we’ve been organized and we wanted to prove we could do that against anybody. Doesn’t matter what their name is, who they are, what they’re doing this season, and I think we did that.”
UMass is back on the field for its penultimate non-conference game of the regular season on Sunday when it travels to Bryant to take on the Bulldogs. Kickoff is slated for 1 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN+.
Matt Skillings can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter/X @matt_skillings
