Maile Hayes scored the game’s only goal in the 36th minute Sunday, lifting the USC women’s soccer team to a 1-0 win over UCLA at Dignity Health Sports Park, giving the Trojans their first outright conference championship in school history.
And that championship comes in the newly expanded Big Ten, which USC joined last summer after three decades in the Pac-12.
Hayes, a senior forward, ran on to a nice feed from Helena Sampaio and one-timed a right-footed shot through the legs of UCLA keeper Ryan Campbell for her team-leading eighth goal of the season. It was just the second score Campbell has given up in six games this month while for Sampaio the assist was her sixth of the year, also a team best.
Goalkeeper Laurence Gladu then saved the game with a pair of sterling stops on UCLA’s Maya Evans in the 67th minute, making a diving one-handed deflection of a right-footed shot headed in at the far post, then punching away the ensuing corner kick. The shutout was Gladu’s ninth of the season.
The victory ran USC’s winning streak to seven games and left it unbeaten in 11 games since losing at Stanford on Sept. 8. UCLA’s last loss came on the same day at Kentucky.
The sixth-ranked Trojans (14-1-2 overall, 10-0-1 Big Ten) and No. 8 UCLA (13-3-3, 8-1-2) now move on to the Big Ten Conference tournament, which kicks off Thursday at the University of Minnesota, with the national championship to follow. USC has made 22 appearances in the NCAA tournament, UCLA has qualified 26 times.
The Trojans played 30 seasons in the Pac-12, winning two national championships, but the best they could do in conference play was a shared title, with UCLA and California, in 1998.