By Steve Lansdale
Senior goalkeeper Abby Smith turned in two saves, breaking the all-time record for shutouts by a University of Texas goalkeeper and leading the Longhorns to a 3-0 victory over Montana in their regular-season finale.
Texas, which outshot Montana, 18-9, and enjoyed an 8-3 advantage in shots on goal and a 6-3 edge on corner kicks, finished the regular season with a record of 8-5-4 while Montana’s record slipped to 8-10-2.
In the last regular-season game of their careers, senior forward Kelsey Shimmick and senior defender Brinkley Field scored [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] two of the three UT goals; freshman forward Alex Adams also scored for the Longhorns.
“Credit to Montana — a great squad,” Texas head coach Angela Kelly said. “I was telling their coach, ‘thank you so much for coming.’ It was in tough conditions. It is always really hard to come in and play at somebody’s home on Senior Night. I have a ton of respect for (Montana coach) Mark (Plakorus), and they played great.”
Smith’s shutout was the 30th of her career, breaking the career record of 29 set in 2008 by former UT netminder Dianna Pfenninger.
“The record is a great thing,” Smith said. “It’s nice to make history, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the girls on the field in front of us. (Texas defender) Ali Schmalz came up huge this game — she made some really crucial saves. I think she deserves huge credit to me being able to have my name on the record. It’s nice that my name is up there, but at the same time I wouldn’t be able to have that without them.”
Shimmick scored the only goal the Longhorns would need in the seventh minute, finding the lower right corner of the net after an assist from freshman forward Alexa Adams. The goal was the 10th in Shimmick’s career, and pulled her into a three-way tie with teammates Mikayla Flores and Lindsey Meyer for second on the team goal-scoring list with three scores this season. The Texas lead would grow in the second half when Adams scored in the 52nd minute off an assist from Flores; Adams has twice as many goals — six — this season as any other UT player. Brinkley then closed out the scoring in the 81st minute with an unassisted goal — the only score in her career at Texas.
“It was fitting for Brinkley [Field] to get her first career goal,” Kelly said. “Lots of ‘feel good’ and lots of things we can reflect back on. As a coach, I just want us to play better every time. We have a heck of an event coming up, and we’re going to get healthy and move forward to our match in Kansas City on Wednesday.”
The Longhorns now will prepare for the upcoming Big 12 Championship, which will be held Nov. 4-8 at Swope Park in Kansas City, Kan. The third-seeded Longhorns will face No. 6 Kansas in the quarterfinal round at 8 p.m., Wed., Nov. 4, in a game that will be shown live on the Big 12 Digital Network. The winner of that match will face the winner of second-seeded Baylor and seventh-seeded TCU in the semifinal.
Shimmick said that the tough slate of games the Longhorns played against the rest of the Big 12 prepared them well for the upcoming conference tournament.
“We had to battle our way through it,” Shimmick said. “There have been tough losses and a couple unfortunate ties, but we hung in there, and we’re still going at it. Now it’s time to get to Big 12s and win it.”
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