Gator soccer improves to 5-2 on the season after defeating Jacksonville University 4-0 on Sunday. The victory comes after a tough loss to Texas A&M earlier last week. Gator head coach Becky Burleigh believes the loss was a learning experience for the team. “They taught us some things we can work on, improve on, one of which was dealing with high pressure,” Burleigh said.
Heading into Sunday’s game Burleigh emphasized that the team needed to be resilient, referring to a community outreach program the team is involved with. “We gave each kid a green ball who came to the game, and the whole point of this is that resilience is bouncing back from adversity for us… so we looked at that as a bounce back game for us.” Burleigh said.
The team was able to score all four goals against JU in the first half, which was part of Burleigh’s effort to split the game up into quarters. “We’re going to try to play this game within a game… we divided the game into quarters, with the goal to win each quarter,” Burleigh told her team. By Burleigh’s count the team won the first two quarters by scoring early, and tied the final two quarters due to no production on offense.
Moving ahead, the Gators will be taking on Ole Miss in their second SEC match of the season. Burleigh knows her team has a tough challenge ahead of them. “We’re going to have a lot on our hands with that team…. They have a lot of experience and that’ll give us a good challenge,” Burleigh said. You can find coverage of the game on ESPN Gainesville 95.3 FM Friday starting at 6:50 pm. To hear audio from this article click below