Women's soccer prepares to face defending national champ Santa Clara

Friday night lights strike at Drake Stadium for the first time ever as the No. 3 UCLA women’s soccer team squares off against Santa Clara tonight.

The Bruins (7-1) are looking forward to breaking in the new lights at Drake.

“It’s going to be awesome,” UCLA head coach Jillian Ellis said. “When you play at night I think a lot of these kids think back to high school, when you have a Friday night game and you get a big crowd, and I think it just tends to get you more excited when you’re playing at night.”

Additional intrigue is added to tonight’s match-up as the Broncos (6-2-1) are the defending national champions. UCLA has never beaten Santa Clara, having met, however, only three times during the regular season. Last year, the Bruins lost to the Broncos at Santa Clara 3-0.

“It’s kind of a revenge thing to go out there and beat Santa Clara,” senior defender Tracey Winzen said. “I think we can do it and I think we’re a solid team.”

As it stands, UCLA is ranked higher than No. 11 Santa Clara, but the Bruins aren’t placing too much importance in the national rankings. In fact, some players claim not to be paying attention to the national polls at all.

“Each game is different and you have to show up each game and try to play your best game,” Winzen said. “I didn’t even know Santa Clara was ranked lower than us or higher than us. I think we should just go out there and play.”

Still, dusting off Santa Clara for the first time ever at Drake Stadium’s inaugural night game would be nice.

“(This match) is big for us in the sense that we would like to come out and play well. It’s our first game under the lights and we haven’t beaten Santa Clara, so I think it has more of a psychological importance than anything,” Ellis said.

The Bruins face Loyola Marymount Sunday. LMU and UCLA have played six times with UCLA winning all six matches.