Hawaii soccer: Wahine shoot for unprecedented 2-0 Big West start

The Hawaii soccer team, by virtue of its Big West-opening comeback win over Cal State Northridge last week, is already in uncharted territory.

UH (3-6-1 overall) can explore further off the map with a win, or even a draw, against UC Irvine (3-9, 2-0) tonight at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium.

(UPDATE: The Rainbow Wahine ran away from Irvine, 3-0, for their first win over the Anteaters in four tries as a Big West member at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium. Kayla Watanabe scored her first two goals in a Wahine uniform and Kayla Ryan added a late score to give her three goals in two games.)

The Wahine enjoyed the 2-1 win over Northridge — keyed by Kayla Ryan’s brace — last Thursday night, then tried to get the program’s first Big West-opening victory in eight tries out of their heads.

“Just when you let your guard down, something stupid or crazy happens. We’ve learned that in the past,” UH coach Michele Nagamine said Wednesday.

That would include the very final seconds of UH’s 1-0 loss at Irvine in double overtime last year. It was about five seconds away from being called a draw in that Big West opener when Irvine scored on a throw-in, setting the tone of a oh-so-close-but-not-enough conference season for the Wahine, who just missed out on the conference tournament at 4-4-1.

The Anteaters’ record this year is deceptive. They played four ranked teams during nonconference play, and were competitive in some of those games (they played UCLA within 2-1 in a loss, whereas UH lost to the Bruins 4-0). Nagamine noted she recently saw a nonconference strength of schedule report with Irvine at No. 6 nationally and UH at No. 16.

Irvine, which entered conference play on a six-match losing streak, has already beaten UC Riverside in overtime (1-0) and UC Davis (2-1) on Sunday to enter today’s match atop the standings. Both matches were in Irvine.

“It’s going to a brutal game, which is why we did not dwell on the victory against CSUN,” Nagamine said.

The coach noticed a shift in demeanor amongst her players over the last week.

“I think Kayla Ryan has basically inspired the team. Because you look at a player like Kayla Ryan, she’s young, she hadn’t had a lot of starts, she came in and she maximized her opportunity,” Nagamine said. “I think that’s what the team has done in this last week. ‘Hey, I can do that. It was nice to see that our teammate could work so hard and get a result by taking advantage of the opportunity.’ So I think that’s kind of what we’re looking at. We know we have a tremendous opportunity to go where we haven’t gone before, once again.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. with the match begin televised on Spectrum Sports.