By Ron Smith
October 15, 2025
 
(AZUSA, Calif.) Westmont Women's Soccer (2-8, 2-2 PacWest) ended its three-game road trip with a 1-0 loss at Azusa Pacific 7-1-3, 4-0) on Wednesday. The Warriors outshot the Cougars 13-9, including a 6-4 advantage of shots on goal. However, Azusa Pacific held a 56% to 44% advantage in time of possession.
 
"We went into the game talking a lot about details," reported Westmont's head coach Lauren Matthias. "APU is a really good team. Against a team like that, the details are important. We weren't quite as sharp for the full 90 (minutes)."
 
The game's only goal came in the 22nd minute after Abbie Campos sent the ball from midfield to the left side. The Cougars' Faith Crouse received the pass, dribbled to within five yards of the end line, then drove the ball across the face of the goal. Haley-Scott Recarte ran on it at the near post, touching it into the goal with her right foot.
 
"Essentially, once they got their goal, from thereafter, it felt like we strung things together and cleaned it up a little bit," assessed Matthias. "I thought that the second half was a lot cleaner and sharper, but we couldn't find the net.
 
"We made a couple of adjustments in the first half and at the half as well. We slid Amelia Villa to outside back for a good majority of the game and I thought she did fantastic out there defensively. She won a lot of 50-50 balls. Giselle Cancino did fantastic at outside back for us as well. She was driving and connecting passes. I thought those two played very well and helped us generate some opportunities.
 
"We had a lot of good passing out of the back. I thought our two center backs (Makenna Meyers and Madison Ford), were remarkable today in terms of playing the ball out.
 
"Kayla Snyder got into the game in the midfield and did a great job having impact and being physical. APU's midfield is very good and she did a good job matching them.
 
"Skyler McNamara did a good job up top creating some space for us on the left and beating APU's back line. She exposed that space a little bit."
 
In other PacWest action, Concordia (8-1-3, 3-0-2) defeated Vanguard (3-6-1, 1-3) by a score of 2-0 while Point Loma (4-2-3, 1-0-2) and Biola (3-1-8, 0-0-5) battled to a 1-1 tie. As a result of today's games, Westmont finds itself in fifth place in the PacWest standings with one game to go before the halfway point in the conference season. At season's end, the top four teams will advance to the PacWest Tournament.
 
"We still haven't played our best soccer," noted Matthias, "but we have quite the runway to pick up momentum and try to make a push."
 
The Warriors will look for liftoff when they take on Biola on Saturday, October 18, as part of Homecoming Weekend. Kick-off is scheduled for noon.