Recap: No. 3 Stanford Women’s Soccer powers past Boston College as Ratcliffe wins 400
On Thursday, No. 3 Stanford women’s soccer defeated Boston College by a final score of 2-0. It was Stanford’s first home match since their 6-0 victory over Arizona back on August 28th. Jasmine Aikey (10:16) and Andrea Kitahata (76:02) scored for the Cardinal. Caroline Birkel was the winning goalkeeper for the Cardinal, totaling one save and zero goals allowed while Olivia Shippee was the losing goalkeeper for the Eagles, totaling 10 saves while giving up two goals. Stanford head coach Paul Ratcliffe also picked up his 400th career win as head coach. Stanford improves to 8-1-1 overall and 2-0-1 in the ACC while Boston College falls to 4-3-4 overall and 0-2-1 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Boston College at Stanford-Thursday, September 25th
“Yeah, hard fought victory,” Ratcliffe said after the match. “Boston College very well organized and it was difficult to break them down. Created a lot of chances, but we only, we capitalized twice, so proud of the team’s result.”
Stanford would get the first corner kick of the match at 7:20 and soon scored their first goal at 10:16 as Aikey found the bottom right of the goal off her left foot. That made it a 1-0 lead for the Cardinal.
Stanford would go on to have corner kicks at 20:09, 29:04, and 32:23, failing to score another goal the rest of the half. Stanford out-shot Boston College 15-0 in the first half and had a 4-0 advantage in corner kicks. Stanford on paper should have had a second goal, but to the credit of Boston College, their goalkeeper Olivia Shippee was doing a fantastic job of getting saves and keeping the ball out of the net.
In the second half, Stanford continued to be aggressive, firing multiple shots within the first few minutes. They then got a corner kick at 55:46. Despite several chances, it was still a 1-0 lead.
For the next 20 minutes, it remained a 1-0 lead for Stanford. Stanford defender Elise Evans got a yellow card and with each passing minute, it felt like Boston College just might even things up. Finally, at 76:02, Kitahata found the bottom right of the goal off her right foot thanks to an assist from Aikey. That made it a 2-0 lead for Stanford.
“Perseverance for sure,” Kitahata said of getting that second goal. “I mean you see 28 on the shots on the billboard and it takes that many shots to put them away sometimes. And so having that big of a gap, we knew that a second one was going to come. We were hoping for maybe a third or a fourth, but we just had to keep pushing and eventually we got there and we cracked them open.”
“Jazzy for me, was one of the stars of the game,” Ratcliffe said of Aikey. “The first goal was her hard work and grit closing down the goalkeeper to get the goal and then the second one, she made a really unselfish run to create space for Andrea Kitahata to come inside and curl a beautiful shot to score the second goal. So I thought Jazzy’s work great was phenomenal and her skill on the ball, she was really a dominant player tonight.”
From there, Stanford would hang on to win 2-0 as Boston College wasn’t really able to get any good shots on goal. It was a little closer than Stanford would have wanted, but it was still a multi-goal win in the end.
“Yeah, I give them credit,” Ratcliffe said of Boston College’s defense. “I thought Boston College was, they’re very resilient and then their goalkeeper made some big saves. So I give a lot of credit to their back line and their goalkeeping. They did an extraordinary job. We need to be a little bit more clinical in our finishing and take our chances, especially second chance, we had a few that hit post that I thought we could have capitalized on, but overall happy with the result.”
“Yeah, I mean BC put up a fight,” Kitahata said. “They came into Cagan, which is a hard, we make it hard for a lot of teams to do, and held us off to two goals which, we’re happy with those two that we got, but with 28 chances we want to put more away and really happy with the shutout. But honestly a great side that we played tonight and proud of the girls for pulling out the win.”
For Stanford, this was a nice win for them. After getting a bye week following their road swing, it was good to get a win in front of the home crowd and get some momentum going ahead of an important home stand.
“Yeah, it’s difficult because you lose your rhythm a little bit,” Ratcliffe said of managing a bye week. “So I don’t love having the bye weeks and you can see it a little bit today, but I thought they came on strong and we got better as the game went and played really well down the line. But yeah, it’s always difficult to replicate games and that’s what you’re trying to do in the bye week is kind of replicate what you, you know, getting prepared for.”
“Yeah, the bye week is a blessing,” Kitahata said in contrast. “We get to work on some stuff that we normally don’t get to work on. During season you normally get one real good day of training when we’re playing Thursday-Sunday. So we got to tighten a couple of things down that we wanted to and we only have two games within a three-week span, so we knew that we needed to walk away with six points or else you know we’re wasting three weeks of ACC play. And so we got the three points today and we’re hoping for three more on Sunday.”
What also made this win fun for Stanford was the fact that new Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame inductee Kelley O’Hara was in attendance to watch the match and support the team. That made the win all the more meaningful for the Cardinal.
“Yeah, Kelly’s fantastic,” Ratcliffe said. “She’s an incredible ambassador of Stanford women’s soccer. And she’s probably the top recruit I got early in my career that really changed the Stanford women’s soccer program and won a Hermann Trophy here. So she’s extraordinary and just a great personality to all the players loved her. They absolutely love her. I’m sure they want even more time with her. But yeah, Kelly’s amazing.”
And then, as was mentioned earlier, this was Ratcliffe’s 400th career win. Even though he tried to brush it off, that’s a lot of wins for a soccer coach. Truly a testament to his stellar coaching and the program he has built at Stanford.
“Yeah, I’ve been super proud that I got 400 wins,” Ratcliffe said. “I don’t really keep tabs on it or check it I’m just trying to win every game. So it’s one game at a time for me, but yeah when I reflect on it, super proud that I’ve been here for that long at Stanford and won 400 games and it’s testament to all the great student athletes I’ve had over the years that have won so many games…Someone told me last game, I think, that I was at 399 and I didn’t know. One of the players, but I didn’t know about it.”
Up next for Stanford is a home match against Syracuse on Sunday, September 28th. That will begin at 1:00 PM PT on ACCNX.
“Yeah, another ACC matchup there, they don’t get easier,” Ratcliffe said looking ahead to Syracuse. “So it’s going to be another tough match for us. We’ve got to recover after this game and get prepared and have a you know, a really good outing on Sunday.”
“Yeah, we’re taking it one game at a time,” Kitahata added. “Every win we don’t take for granted and we know that we’re going to come out guns a blazing on Sunday against Syracuse, so we’re excited for it.”
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