The Taylor Zdrojewski Comeback Story Grows With Second Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week Award
Another week, another Texas Tech Soccer star atop the Big 12 honors list with Taylor Zdrojewski earning Offensive Player of the Week for the second time this season. Zdrojewski notched a brace in the team’s 2-0 win over New Mexico State with two second half goals pushing her to six goals on the season, good for 8th best in the nation.
“Z’s always been a goal scorer,” said Texas Tech head coach Tom Stone. “For Aaron Gordon for FC Dallas; that’s just what she did. Give her a window and she usually makes the most of it. And she’s a very unselfish player. She’s happy if the team wins, whether she scores or not. But it’s kind of special when she does score the winner because everyone is so happy that she’s out there doing what she loves to do after quite a scare a couple years ago.”
That scare was a season ending injury her freshman year that was extensive enough it ultimately took her two seasons to truly shake off and get back to her goal scoring menace ways. A less competitive, driven athlete may never have made it back to this point but she is now doing exactly what everyone expected when she was recruited. She did set the Texas High School single-season record for goals after all with an INSANE 114 goals for Celina HS in 2021. Yes you read that correctly, 114.
Taylor Zdrojewski Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week
After having an early goal taken off the board for a close offsides call the redshirt-junior broke through in the 70th minute of play off a corner service from Macy Blackburn. Zrojewski had three players surrounding her but her physical presence was too much for the Aggie defense to handle and she soared above them all to head it into goal.
“We definitely knew that any way we got to get a goal is any way we got to,” said Zdrojewski following the New Mexico State win. “It doesn’t have to be the prettiest, but Macy did serve me up a pretty beautiful ball and that’s just what we do. We practice it all the time.”
Only seven minutes later Zdrojewski made up for lost time getting her second goal of the game on a run of play diving header to push the lead to 2-0. This also came off a Blackburn assist with Raleigh Greason earning the second assist on the play with a beautiful one-touch toe poke that set Blackburn free.
“We’ve seen how incredible Z is at goal scoring,” said Blackburn. “You get the ball anywhere near her and it’s typically going to go in the back of the net. And Z came up big even though she probably had like five people on her. She knew what the team needed. And you know she did what she’s good at, which is scoring goals.”
This marks Zdrojewski’s third career brace and she also reached the 40th career point mark as she now has 16 career goals and eight career assists. The two assists from Blackburn got her to 40 career assists as well, extending her All-Time career assist record at Texas Tech.
Texas Tech is off this Thursday but returns to the pitch at John Walker in Lubbock on Sunday when they face Utah State at 1 pm. BE THERE!
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