Texas State head coach Kat Conner never had the chance to to see Olivia Wright play in person before the freshman joined the team.
Conner’s assistant coaches, though — Lorraine Quinn and Link Scoggins — couldn’t stop raving about the San Antonio Cornerstone Christian forward.
“They always told me like, ‘This kid has such a great first step. She can finish like nobody’s business. And you know, she just does it, Coach,’” Conner said. “And they were right and I’ve seen it.”
Wright scored the first goal of her college career on Sunday, helping the maroon and gold defeat Little Rock inside Bobcat Soccer Complex, 2-1.
Texas State (3-8-1, 3-4-0 Sun Belt) was the more aggressive team during the first match, taking eight shots and placing four of them on goal while holding the Trojans (2-5-1, 2-3-1) to just five shots. The visitors’ one shot on goal proved to be costly, though, as Little Rock redshirt senior forward Doro Greulich took a shot from deep that sailed just under the crossbar and just over the outstretched hand of freshman goalkeeper Beth Agee.
“I thought (the players) understood exactly what our game plan was, I thought they executed it very well in the first half. We got a little tired in the first half and made a slip up of not stepping up together and Little Rock caught us with a good goal,” Conner said. “But you know, I told the players at halftime, they played a marvelous first half, they needed to come back out and do it again and you know, get the shots off a little quicker, get their crosses off a little quicker. And I thought they were trying to do that.”
With 15 minutes left in the match, freshman midfielder Emma Jones wrestled away a loose ball and sent it up the field to Wright. The forward stumbled entering the box after avoiding a sliding tackler, but recovered to find herself one-on-one with the keeper on the left side of the field. Wright fired a shot into the bottom right corner of the goal for the Bobcats’ first score of the match, tying it up at 1-1.
“Our momentum was just to keep pushing forward,” Wright said. “Even if we get scored on, always have that mentality to always push forward, to do better. So we really just stayed connected and got a goal.”
Twelve minutes later, Texas State was awarded a throw-in just outside the box on the left side of the pitch. Senior midfielder Mackenzie Smith called for the ball as she raced up the field and redshirt senior forward Sydney Kammer sent her a perfect bounce pass. Smith was taken down inside the box by a Trojan defender, earning a penalty kick. The Cypress native placed the ball in the bottom left corner of the frame to take the go-ahead goal and seal the 2-1 win for Texas State.
“(I was thinking), ‘I’m gonna make it. It’s going in,’” Smith said. “(It felt) awesome. I’ve been waiting for that all season.”
The Bobcats will conclude the 2020 regular season with their Senior Day match when it hosts Louisiana-Monroe (0-7, 0-6) on Sunday at 1 p.m. Conner said she wants the team to build on the win over Little Rock.
“We’re gonna keep with it. We’re gonna study the game film, show them exactly the good stuff they did. And we’ll look at where we slipped up, but then we’ll show them what makes them successful,” Conner said. “And I think they need to see themselves so that they just build their confidence and that’s what we need to work on and keep building our confidence.”
