210GAMEDAY.COM | SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
The Roadrunners had a public scrimmage at the Convocation Center.
UTSA opens the season at home on Friday, Aug. 29, against Stephen F. Austin.
Durden scored in the first half, Brooklyn Bailey scored in the second half – both on headers – and the Roadrunners made it 3-0 on a late own-goal to beat St. Mary’s on Thursday night at UTSA Park West Athletics Complex.
Durden is a redshirt sophomore midfield who came to UTSA from Seminole State College. Her goal on Thursday night was her first in a UTSA uniform and first Division I goal. Her shot was a header in the 33rd minute off a free kick from Ava Jackson, a redshirt freshman from British Columbia, Canada.
Bailey is a freshman from Klein Collins High School in Spring Texas. She had three goals in a UTSA exhibition game. Thursday marked her first official collegiate goal and it came in the 67th minute off an assist from Kamryn Watson.
UTSA’s defense recorded its second shutout and has allowed only one goal in three games. Starting goalkeeper Jasmine Kessler played most of Thursday’s game and Brilynn Mueller finished off the second half.
UTSA is now 1-1-1 on the season. The Roadrunners are back at home on Sunday at 7 p.m. against Lamar.
“Ava stepped up to the plate to serve it in. Massive credit to her. That was a great ball. I just happened to be right place at the right time.
“It was definitely a relief to see the ball go into the back of the net. It’s always a good feeling to get a goal at home.”
“We were all working together and just wanting to get out first in-season win, not just an exhibition match. So it just felt great to be out there and get a W.
“It was going good. I ended up falling on the ground but getting back up and celebrating with my teammates. It was really good.
“I saw it coming off. I had the defender below me so then I was trying to get over her and try to make sure the header went down and not over the goal. I was just glad the ball went where I wanted it to go and the ball was placed perfectly from Kam so it was really good.
“After Aaliyaiah scored and after the half kind of coming together and saying that we need to move forward as a team and go against our standards and not play to their level and just continuing to keep our standards high. We just had to settle down and continue play our game.”
Last year, UTSA beat St. Mary’s 1-0 on a goal by Izzy Lane. Jasmine Kessler and Jordan Walker had assists and Kessler made two saves.
UTSA is 0-1-1 coming into this season’s rematch. The Roadrunners, who didn’t score in either of their first two outings, are coming off a 0-0 tie with Houston and a 1-0 loss to ninth-ranked TCU.
St. Mary’s has played one exhibition, a 4-0 loss to Houston. The Rattlers’ schedule also shows Thursday’s meeting with UTSA as an exhibition.
St. Mary’s went 9-7-3 last season and reached the Lone Star Tournament quarterfinals. Rattlers head coach Kevin Driggs has a 46-31-14 record in five season at St. Mary’s.
Ninth-ranked TCU beat UTSA 1-0 on Sunday night at Park West Athletics Complex.
The Frogs’ Cameron Patton scored the only goal of the night in the 81st minute, coming off assists from Grace Vest and Allyson Brown.
Goaltenders Jasmine Kessler of UTSA and Olivia Geller of TCU made four saves each to keep things tied 0-0 going into the final 10 minutes of the game.
UTSA’s Zoe May, Michelle Polo and Leah Varela all had shots on goal in the first 23 minutes of the first half. Izzy Lane had a shot on goal in the second half, coming in the 58th minute.
UTSA is now 0-1-1 on the season including a 0-0 tie against Houston in the Roadrunners’ season opener. UTSA plays at home again on Thursday at 7 p.m. against St. Mary’s.
TCU, the defending Big 12 regular-season champion, beat Pepperdine 6-1 in its season opener and is now 2-0.
“Against Pepperdine on Thursday night (TCU) completed 88 percent of their passes. We had a choice as a coaching staff. We could sit deep let them have the ball and park the bus. Or we could press them. Our DNA, our mentality is to press. I thought our players did a phenomenal job. We had pretty much 36 hours to work on that coming out of the Houston game. We needed to recover physically and mentally from that game, which was exhausting.
“I thought our players took on the game plan extremely well. I thought we disrupted TCU and made their life as difficult and miserable as possible. We were unfortunate to not pull away with a draw tonight.
“But again, when you have a good team like that, when you make one little error at the back post the team is going to punish you for it.”
On UTSA’s scoring chances:
“We know against a top 10 team in the country, we’re going to get only two, maybe three chances. We know we’re not going to get 15 shots. We’re not going to get seven, eight, nine good chances for goals. We’re going to get two or three.
“Most of all I’m extremely proud of our team for limiting TCU. To limit that team to 13 shots,
I think they had five on target. To be fair they scored six goals against (Pepperdine) the team that’s predicted to win the WCC – hats off to our team in how they went out and executed our plan.”
00 Jasmine Kessler
4 Leah Varela
5 Taliyah Spain
12 Emelie Ekman
13 Zoe May
15 Isabel Peters
16 Kacey Grahmann
23 Brooklyn Bailey
24 Aaliyaiah Durden
26 Michelle Polo
44 Izzy Lane
2 Kameron Kloza
6 Bryn Maxwell
7 Ava Jackson
10 Brooke Viccars
17 Kamryn Watson
18 Maria Reyes
20 Abigail Casey
21 Rylee Miller
The Roadrunners weren’t able to put the ball into the net and finished with a 0-0 tie with Houston in the opener of the 2025 women’s soccer schedule at Park West.
UTSA goalkeeper Jasmine Kessler made seven saves and recorded her 11th career shutout.
The Roadrunners took 10 shots on the night. That including three shots on goal: one each by Aaliyaiah Durden, Izzy Lane and Bryn Maxwell.
Brooklyn Bailey had UTSA’s late penalty kick attempt. That came in the final minute of the game on a play that started with a Kameron Kloza free kick led to Ava Jackson being taken down at the edge of the box.
There was a strong breeze out of the south all night. UTSA had the wind at its back the first half and Houston had the wind advantage in the second half. Neither team was to convert that into a goal.
UTSA returns to action at home on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. against ninth-ranked TCU.
I’m extremely proud of our team. We’re tough as hell, honestly.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for their coaching staff and what Ben (Williams), Peter (Mulamba) and their staff are going to do for that team as they move into the Big 12.
I thought our team showed a tremendous amount of resilience and tremendous amount of toughness tonight. It wasn’t our best soccer. We understand that. But you cannot doubt our commitment and our kids’ character on the field and giving effort and really doing a good job.
They had a chance at the end to win it. It would have been nice, the cherry on top. That does not change my opinion of how tough our kids are.
PITTMAN ON PLAYING AGAINST THE WIND IN THE SECOND HALF:
We were hoping the wind would die as the night went on because that’s normally what happens here in San Antonio. Normally we would have been all right.
We didn’t take enough chances in the first half. We should have pulled the trigger more. We were a little bit on the back foot and not as good quality wise.
We knew our backs were going to be against the wall in the second half. I was really proud of our kids and how they responded because I thought we created just as many if not better chances in the second half off the counter attack.
It’s a lot to build on. A lot to take away from this game. We’ll win some of these close ones for sure.
UTSA’s 2025 women’s soccer season officially gets underway tonight.
The Roadrunners take on Houston at 7 p.m. at UTSA Park West Athletics Complex.
UTSA warmed up for the opener with two exhibition matches.
The Roadrunners put on a show for the home fans with a 6-0 preseason victory over A&M-Corpus Christi at Park West.
“It really gave us an opportunity against Corpus to work on our defensive pressing, how we want to disrupt teams,” UTSA coach Derek Pittman said in Monday’s news conference on ESPN+. “It also gave us an opportunity to attack a lot. We were fortunate enough to score several goals in that game from a number of different people, which was really positive.”
The Roadrunners got goals three goals from Brooklyn Bailey and one each from Jasmine Kessler, Michelle Polo and Ava Jackson.
UTSA’s second preseason game was a 2-0 loss to 19th-ranked Texas.
“Going against Texas, we know they’re always going to be a talented squad,” Pittman said. “They’re ranked in the top 20 in the preseason polls. They won the SEC championship last year. They lost several players, key contributors for their team, but they’re still a very talented group and we knew it was going to be a different kind of test.
“We wanted to play Texas because we knew these are the types of games that we had coming up in the opening weekend. Texas was going to prepare us for what we’re going to see against Houston. Texas was going to prepare us for what we’re going to see vs. TCU.”
Houston, a member of the Big 12 Conference, beat UTSA 2-1 last season in Houston. Bri Carrigan scored UTSA’s only goal in the loss.
The Cougars are under new head coach Ben Williams. Last season he was the head coach at Stephen F. Austin, which won 14 games and reached the NCAA Tournament. Houston is led by senior Cameryn Maddox, who recorded two goals last season.
UTSA plays at home again Sunday at 7:30 p.m. against ninth-ranked TCU. The Frogs also open the season tonight, taking on Pepperdine in Fort Worth.
TCU is the defending Big 12 regular-season champion and is picked to win the conference again this season.
“It’s exactly what we want for our fans,” Pittman said. “We talk to our players all the time… we want to play the best. We want to put ourselves in these kinds of environments and play these types of teams that are going to test us and really show what we’re made of. I know our players are excited and ready for that.
“Come out and watch us at Park West and you get a chance to see us compete against two very, very strong Big 12 teams in Houston and obviously TCU being ranked in the top 10. It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch and I’m excited to see our players compete in these environments.”
The list includes three UTSA players:
Jasmine Kessler – junior goalkeeper from Spring, Texas
Zoe May – senior midfielder from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Michelle Polo – junior midfielder from Magnolia, Texas
The American Athletic Conference also released its preseason women’s soccer poll.
1. Memphis
2. South Florida
3. Rice
4. East Carolina
5. North Texas
6. Tulsa
7. UAB
8. UTSA
9. Florida Atlantic
10. Charlotte
11. Temple
The Roadrunners recorded a preseason home-field victory over A&M-Corpus Christi and a preseason road loss to 19th ranked Texas.
UTSA’s first 2025 game that counts will be at home at Park West on Thursday at 7 p.m. against Houston. The Roadrunners follow that up with another home game on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. against ninth-ranked TCU.
Coach Derek Pittman and UTSA senior midfielder Zoe May took time on Monday to answer questions as part of the program’s weekly news conference on ESPN+.
“We want to score goals. We want to play aggressively,” Pittman said. “We got to see that in the opening game against Corpus Christi.
“And then even against University of Texas last weekend, I thought it was really positive. We went in there with the intention to put our best foot forward and played our game. I thought we did an excellent job of that – disrupting them in many ways. A bit unfortunate to not score a goal ourselves but we learned quite a bit from that game. It’s going to be able to set us up going into a really difficult week against Houston and TCU.”
May is in her second season at UTSA. Last season she was one of the new faces in the Roadrunners’ lineup after transferring from Memphis. She enters this season as one of the most experienced players on a roster with a lot of new players.
“It’s extremely exciting,” May said. “We have 12 new girls, a lot of freshmen and transfers. It’s definitely some new faces but the energy on the field is unmatched since any team I’ve ever been on really. You can feel it on the bench even, in the locker room, just hanging out with the girls.
“It’s been a lot of fun. We have really great chemistry. It all clicks. So I think really getting faced with these difficult teams raises the level of competitiveness for us and makes us excited to go out every practice to give it our all to prepare for them. I know we’re ready. We’re excited.”
UTSA had an 8-7-3 record last season. The Roadrunners’ first American Athletic Conference game of 2025 is Sept. 11, on the road against Florida Atlantic. Their first conference home game is Sept. 18 against North Texas.