In Case You Missed It
PULLMAN – In front of a record 2,812 fans at Lower Soccer Field, #23 Washington State (2-0-0) left no doubt en route to a 6-0 win over Montana (0-1-2) Friday night. The Cougs used three goals in each half to bulldoze their way past the visiting Grizzlies, scoring in the fourth minute and never looking back. Senior striker
Morgan Weaver came up with both of the Cougars' first two goals using her speed to blow past the Montana backline to open the night while out muscling the defense a few minutes later to post the brace. In both cases, Weaver was the beneficiary of pin point passes from junior
Makamae Gomera-Stevens who came out blazing in her first start of the season. With a comfortable lead the Cougs made it a hat-trick in the opening half when junior
Hanna Goff found herself in the right place at the right time, to knock home her second goal in as many game. The goal came on yet another corner for the Cougs as junior
Brianna Alger found the head of sophomore
Mykiaa Minniss who promptly redirected the cross to the lip of the goal where Goff was waiting to finish things off. The goal included three of the four Cougar starting defenders as Alger nabbed her third assist of the young season while Minniss was credited with her first-career assist.
Leading by three at the break the Cougars put to rest any concerns of a possible let up in the game's final 45 minutes as freshman
MacKenzie Frimpong-Ellertson pounced on a loose ball near the mouth of the goal to net her first-collegiate tally just 1:08 into the new half. Frimpong-Ellertson was able to take advantage of a scramble for the ball after junior
Aaqila McLyn's cross, which was looking for grad-transfer
Averie Collins, just missed its mark but landed in the danger area. While Collins may have missed her first chance to get on the scoreboard she would not miss her second as the new Coug drilled a penalty kick in the 59th minute to make it 5-0. Collins tallied her first goal as a Coug after taking the penalty, the second of the season for WSU, that had been awarded after junior
Elyse Bennett was tackled from behind in the 18. With nearly every available Coug seeing action in the game, senior
Katie Jones would put the finishing touches on the rout in the 76th minute with her first goal of the season on WSU's eighth corner of the night. On the near post, Jones would head in the sixth goal of the contest after freshman
Bridget Rieken redirected a corner from sophomore
Elaily Hernandez-Repreza that had found the big freshman on the back post.
While the offense dominated the defense, when not getting into the attack, held the Grizzlies to just three shots. However, one of the shots did test super senior
Ella Dederick in goal as the Cougar captain made a huge diving save to keep the clean sheet intact in the 31st minute. WSU earned its second-straight shutout as Dederick and redshirt-senior
Rachel Johnson combined to play the 90 minutes with Dederick picking up her 39th career victory.
Stat of the Match
The Cougars scored their most goals since Aug. 12, 2012, when WSU defeated Boise State, 6-0.
The Moments That Made The Match
Things You Need To Know
- The Cougs' beat Montana for the third-consecutive game and ran their unbeaten streak to 11-straight. In the last three wins, all coming at home in the last two seasons, WSU has outscored the Grizzlies 14-2.
- The previous attendance record was 2,623 set against BYU, Aug. 19, 2016, to start the season.
- Morgan Weaver scored multiple goals for the sixth time in her career while running her season total to three and her career total to 31. Weaver is just the fifth-player in WSU history to score at least 30 career goals and moved past Kiersten Dallstream (2006-09) for fourth place on the all-time scoring list.
- Five different Cougars scored in the game with Frimpong-Ellertson, Collins, and Jones all scoring their first goals of the season. For Collins it was her first in a WSU uniform while Jones scored for the first time her freshman season in 2016.
- Alger recorded her third assist of the season to keep pace with Maddy Haro's record-breaking 2018 season when the now-graduated standout recorded 15 assists.
- Gomera-Stevens posted her first-career multi-assist game after entering the contest with three career assists. McLyn posted her fourth-career assist and first of the season while Rieken and Minniss each grabbed their first career assists. Five of the Cougars' seven assists came from their defensive backline.
- WSU played 25 players in the game.
