There have been a lot of historic moments in the Black and Blue Rivalry between the Long Beach State and UC Irvine women’s soccer teams the last 12 months with the teams facing off four times.
Sunday night’s opening round of the Big West Championships was no different as the match’s first 90 minutes ended the same way they did when the two teams met in the regular season — in a draw.
The next 20 minutes provided the same outcome as LBSU and UCI went to penalty kicks after 110 minutes in a 0-0 tie.
But, when the match came down to penalty kicks, the Anteaters defeated Long Beach State 4-1 to advance.
“I’m very proud of my team,” Long Beach State coach Mauricio Ingrassia said. “Tonight was a hard-fought match. We had opportunities, Irvine had opportunities as well and we felt good about our performance overall. In a PK shootout, those are part of the game. Sometimes those go your way, sometimes they don’t. This doesn’t take away from the season that we had.”
Throughout the match UC Irvine’s Glo Hinojosa and Long Beach State’s Zora Standifer each had clean sheets in regulation and extra time with them combining for 11 saves. Standifer had a game-high seven.
“Wow, what a game,” UC Irvine coach Scott Juniper said. “I’ve coming in now for years and years and competing against Long Beach State, Mauricio and his squad and we knew we had to be really really good today and I think they played showed that.”
For Long Beach State, it was the second season in a row they’ve seen the season come to an end against UC Irvine – last time was in the Big West Championships Final.
For six-year senior Elysia Laramie, she was happy to come back and complete her college career with LBSU after dealing with the pandemic and overcoming injury.
“I could have never guessed what was going to happen,” Laramie said of the last six years. “I don’t think anyone could. I wouldn’t have wanted it to go any other way.”
