When the UConn women’s soc­cer team took the field for the sec­ond half of its game against Col­gate on Sun­day, there was a new ener­gy about it. 

That ener­gy showed up on the stat sheet, as UConn (2–1‑1) net­ted both its goals on 13 shots in the sec­ond half, almost dou­ble what Col­gate (0–3‑1) had in the entire game (7). 

Down 1–0 at half­time, head coach Mar­garet Rodriguez said she knew the team had to turn up the ener­gy in the sec­ond half. 

“I think we played a good first half,” Rodriguez said. “We just lacked a lit­tle bit of ener­gy in the final third… So the mes­sage was when we get in the final third I want us to dri­ve at them, get them out of their shape. I want to defend high­er up, and I want to go after this win.” 

The Huskies cer­tain­ly got the mes­sage and cre­at­ed pres­sure right away on their first pos­ses­sion. It wasn’t long before a cross pass by Kess Elmore to Sofia Leone result­ed in the first UConn goal in the 50th minute. 

“It start­ed out through the back,” Leone said after the game. “It was a ball in to Izzy [Lynch] who laid it off to Kess [Elmore]. And then it was a cross in and I just got my foot on it, real­ly just went for it. But it was a great cross by Kess, great buildup and total team effort.” 

For Leone, a senior who orig­i­nal­ly walked onto the team, it was her first career goal. She said it was an incred­i­ble feel­ing to cel­e­brate with her teammates. 

The red­shirt sopho­more Elmore record­ed her sec­ond assist of the sea­son, increas­ing her team-lead­ing point total to six. 

There were a bunch of great oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the UConn offense through­out the sec­ond half, but the go-ahead and even­tu­al game-win­ning goal didn’t come until the 77th minute. Sopho­more defend­er Rachel Mar­chi­ni scored on a per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed head­er from Jaque­line Harnett’s cor­ner kick. It was Marchini’s first career goal as well. 

Rodriguez said that she knew her team was going to com­plete the comeback. 

“The dif­fer­ence between this team this year as opposed to last year is I nev­er felt we were going to lose the game,” she said. “I real­ly didn’t, and that’s just con­fi­dence in the play­ers that we have. Whether we’re bring­ing subs on or we’re just rotat­ing play­ers, our tempo’s not going to drop, and I nev­er felt we were going to lose the game. It’s just a mat­ter of us find­ing a lit­tle bit of luck to get that sec­ond goal.” 

In the first half, red­shirt junior goal­keep­er Ran­di Pala­cios made a spec­tac­u­lar save on a Col­gate penal­ty shot. How­ev­er, on the ensu­ing cor­ner kick, Leah Lewis scored the only goal of the game for the Raiders. Rodriguez said the team owed Pala­cios a win after that. 

“At half­time I told the team that they owe [Pala­cios] the game, because you don’t allow your keep­er to make that great save and then two min­utes lat­er put a goal in,” she said. 

Pala­cios fin­ished the night with three saves; and the UConn defense real­ly didn’t allow much pres­sure by Col­gate after that first goal. 

The Huskies’ offense real­ly came togeth­er in the sec­ond half, and they fin­ished with 20 shots, sev­en of them on goal. Sopho­more for­ward Duda San­tin led the team with four shots. 

Sopho­more defend­er Pato Jerzak left the game with an ankle injury in the first half and nev­er returned. Rodriguez said it wasn’t any­thing seri­ous though and she should bounce back soon. 

Rodriguez also said that last year’s lead­ing scor­er, junior mid­field­er Sophia Danyko-Kulchy­cky, is on her way back from injury. She hasn’t played yet this sea­son, but she will get reps in prac­tice this week before pos­si­bly being cleared for Sunday’s game. 

Leone said that it was great to be able to con­tribute a key win at home ear­ly in the season. 

“I lit­er­al­ly couldn’t describe a bet­ter feel­ing,” she said. “This win was real­ly impor­tant for our team. We’re hun­gry and we’re climb­ing. It just feels good to walk away with great team­mates and we’re onto tomorrow.” 

Next, the Huskies will head to Prov­i­dence to take on Brown Thurs­day night at 7 p.m. before return­ing home to play their first game at Dil­lon Sta­di­um in Hart­ford on Sunday.