The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2022-23 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
The game was off from the first second for the Long Beach State women’s soccer team as they hosted Washington, with the Beach looking for their first win of the season. A Huskies player began running down the field prior to the ball being kicked off, resulting in a deep possession for Washington to start the game, and an early disadvantage for the Beach. Things didn’t get much better after that in a 5-1 setback for Long Beach State.
Long Beach (0-2-2) will be back at home at George Allen Field twice in the upcoming week, hosting Fresno State Thursday at 7 p.m. and San Diego on Sunday at 7 p.m.
“Give them credit, they’re super athletic,” said LBSU coach Mauricio Ingrassia. “Early goals obviously change things, we usually manage the game better. But we’re young and it took us a while to get into the game. Once we did we had some really nice plays but we could never catch up. We’d fight for the momentum and then just toss it away.”
The Huskies scored in the 12th minute on a cross from Claudia Longo to Karlee Stueckle, then double the lead in the 28th minute as Kyla Ferry put one home. The Beach answered in the 34th minute on Lena Silano’s second score of the year, assisted by Alyssa Reyes. But the Huskies were able to answer within 30 seconds as Summer Yates put one home. Washington added a pair of goals in the last ten minutes of the game to pad their lead.
The Beach’s possession style was massively disrupted by Washington’s pressure throughout the field, particularly in the first half where the Huskies out-possessed the Beach 58-42%. Washington didn’t just the ball they threatened frequently as well, out-shooting the Beach 19-3 in the first half and 6-1 in shots on goal; 80% of their possession was on the Long Beach side of the field and 39% of it was in the deepest quarter of the field.
Ingrassia said that with a young team there are specific emphases to what he’ll tell his team going forward.
“The first thing is your body language has to show respect and pride to our program, which they know that,” he said. “It’s one game, it’s nothing more than one game. Once I get that through to them we’ll start fresh this week with two big games and keep going.”
