Over the weekend, Utah soccer took to the road to compete against two teams: Purdue (Sept. 9) and North Dakota State (Sept. 11). As the Utes took the 3-1 victory over NDSU, junior Cabria Turang scored the winning goal, making it her first goal in her collegiate career.
“It was a really long weekend with Purdue’s game, then having to fly and coming into North Dakota,” Turang said. “We just had to figure it out as the game went on and we did so we put away some chances.”
Since this was her first goal of her college career, Turang couldn’t help her excitement, but she also couldn’t take all the credit. Turang made sure to say that it was sophomore Hailey Skolmoski who shot the ball, but unfortunately it hit the crossbar.
“I was just there to finish it for the first time,” Turang said. “It was really exciting. I had been working hard to get into the box and when I did, I just tried to finish it off.”
Turang added that she had some other opportunities during her time at Utah, but it never went her way. She got her first shot for the Utes the last time they played against Utah Valley in 2014. Turang got her head on the ball off of a Utah corner, and to finish off the play, senior Taylor Slattery kicked the ball into the net, securing Utah’s win against its opponent.
Last year, Turang started in her first college game against Loyola Marymount, and she started in three more Pac-12 matches. This gave her more opportunities to score goals and she took multiple shots, including on-goal opportunities against Houston and USC, but she still couldn’t score a goal.
After her game against Utah Valley, head coach Rich Manning mentioned that Turang had been coming off of an ankle injury, adding that it has been hard for her to get some game time in the last two weeks. But as Turang slowly got back out there, Manning said that it paid off in the game Sunday.
“[Cabria] didn’t play a lot of minutes, but I think she made a really good impact in helping us in kind of calming down the game and of course scoring her first goal,” Manning said. “It was really exciting and kind of put the nail in the coffin for the game.”
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