Dylan Driver uncorked it for Auburn. Then Hannah Bell poured it on.
Driver scored Auburn’s first goal early in the game, then Bell scored another two in the first half alone, and the Tigers cruised to a blowout win over Jacksonville State on Sunday at the Auburn Soccer Complex. Auburn won 5-0, after leading 3-0 at the half — marking the Tigers’ first goals of the season, and their first victory.
Auburn moved to 1-0-1. The players entered Sunday’s game surely champing at the bit to get on the scoreboard, after opening the year with a 0-0 tie with No. 25 Clemson last Wednesday.
Then after they broke the seal, the floodgates opened.
“Once you get that first one in, it kind of gets that confidence going, and then you’re like, ‘OK, let me do another one. Let me keep going,’” Driver smiled after the win. “And then obviously everybody else started finishing too, so it was pretty great.”
Elsewhere on the field, Auburn took care of business, dominating possession, even after putting plenty of substitutes in during the second half. Auburn rolled up 23 shots to Jacksonville State’s one. Auburn forced nine corner kicks, and never had to defend one. Auburn got to play both its goalkeepers, Ayana Yapo and Malia Loadwick, with neither one being too seriously threatened.
The goals
Driver scored her goal in the 13th minute of the match, and it came on a counter-attack after Ava Caldwell came up with a takeaway in Auburn’s own half of the field — then found Driver in space. Driver on the dribble pushed toward the left post. While a defender cut off a potential cut to her right, or a pass in front of the face of the goal, Driver instead kept working left and fired a shot off her left foot, clearing her shot over the Jacksonville State keeper and drilling it just under the crossbar.
“Getting that first goal’s massive,” Auburn head coach James Armstrong said. “And the earlier the better. And the fact that it was such a quality goal, as well, set the tone — and that’s what we ask the girls to do, is set the tone early, be ruthless in front of goal, and Dylan did an awesome job of that.”
Then Bell did her one better: