After dropping four games in a row, the Gators plummeted from a nationally-ranked program to last in the SEC East.
After coming to Florida’s rescue many times this season, goal-keeper Susi Espinoza footed much of the blame on Friday night, as her costly 27th minute error led to the opening goal in UF’s 2-1 loss to Tennessee.
On the heels of a 4-2 drubbing at the hands of South Carolina, Florida will play at Donald R. Dizney stadium for the final time this season Friday against a Tennessee program in similarly dire straits.
An already difficult matchup at No. 11 South Carolina was even tougher for Florida with the absence of coach Becky Burleigh, who stayed back in Gainesville due to COVID-19 contact tracing. A shorthanded Gators team proved no match for the Gamecocks, who came away with a comfortable 4-2 victory at Stone Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday.
Granted, this season’s schedule includes fixtures only against SEC opponents due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But Florida’s heartbreaking loss to Vanderbilt in double overtime last weekend marked the first time since 2018 that coach Becky Burleigh’s team dropped back-to-back conference games.
In an unorthodox season full of cancellations and quarantines, Florida’s historic dominance on “pink day” was foiled by the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Florida will return home to face Vanderbilt Sunday after its first loss of the season against Texas A&M, but the Gators’ traditional white, orange and blue uniforms will take another week off.
Susi Espinoza kept Texas A&M’s Barbara Olivieri at bay in the early stages of Sunday afternoon’s game.
Florida earned the attention of the United Soccer Coaches’ national rankings for the first time this season, slotting in at No. 15 after a win and a draw against ranked Alabama and Georgia teams.
In a tale of two halves at the Diz, Florida overcame a sloppy and toothless first-half performance to notch a 2-1 victory over No. 15 Alabama.
Cameron Hall pounded the ground in frustration. Her golden opportunity to grab a late winner against the No. 8 team in the nation fell harmlessly into Georgia goalkeeper Emory Wegener’s arms as the crowd put their hands behind their heads in the stands of Donald R. Dizney stadium.
Over the last several years, the soccer pitch hosted one of the least competitive iterations of the Florida-Georgia rivalry.
After a tumultuous period of cancellations, re-drafts and waiting, Gators soccer finally has a schedule for 2020.
There has been a revolution in the beautiful game.
When forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored the first goal for Arsenal with an effortless penalty shot in the 28th minute of Saturday’s FA Cup final, the Zoom chat erupted with a cacophony of noise that included claps, cheers and a fair bit of profanity.
The last memory Stuart Hall, the father of Gators soccer player Cameron Hall, had from April 6 to April 24 was watching the film “Creed.”
The Florida soccer team’s 2019 campaign came to an anticlimactic end Friday night in front of its home crowd at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.
After scoring just 23 goals in 21 games last season, Florida’s soccer team needed a player to revitalize its offense.
When former goalie Kaylan Marckese left for the National Women’s Soccer League, coach Becky Burleigh faced a tough decision heading into the 2019-20 campaign.
There were less than 15 minutes to play in the Players Development Academy (PDA) league’s New Jersey Cup Semifinal. Vanessa Kara — forward for the PDA Force — already had two goals. This was her shot at a third.
Solutions by The State News
