USC beats UCLA to claim first outright conference championship in women’s soccer

When Jane Alukonis was hired as the women’s soccer coach at USC three years ago, part of her mission was to bring the school an outright conference championship such as those she won as an assistant at UCLA.

She never imagined that title would come in the expanded Big Ten, the conference the Trojans joined last summer after three decades in the Pac-12.

“I’m very happy with this,” Alukonis said Sunday after the Trojans’ 1-0 win over UCLA at Dignity Health Sports Park. “The Pac-12 would have been nice as well. I have [two] of those. But the Big Ten is so much bigger and more competitive.

“So I’m very, very happy, especially because it’s the first one for our university. We knew we had to come out and get it and give back to the school that gives a lot to us.”

The win — and the title — came on Maile Hayes’ goal in the 36th minute. The 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.

The goal was Hayes’ team-leading eighth of the season and just the second Campbell has allowed in six games this month. For Sampaio the assist was her sixth of the year, also a team best.

The addition of USC and UCLA has helped raise the Big Ten’s profile in women’s soccer overnight. Penn State gave the conference its only national title in the sport in 2015; USC and UCLA have combined for four times as many. This fall the sixth-ranked Trojans (14-1-2 overall, 10-0-1 Big Ten) and No. 8 Bruins (13-3-3, 8-1-2) are the only Big Ten teams ranked in the top 10 nationally.

Another difference between the Big Ten and the Pac-12 is the former has a postseason conference tournament, something neither USC nor UCLA had to worry about before. That competition kicks off Thursday at the University of Minnesota and will be followed by the NCAA tournament.

Yet that’s hardly the biggest change they’ve had to adjust to. After years of making the same trips to play the same schools in the same cities, both coaches tried to embrace the new experiences of playing in the 18-team Big Ten.

“When we were in Illinois, we took the team to a pumpkin patch,” said Margueritte Aozasa, who spent the last decade in the Pac-12, first as an assistant at Stanford and then as head coach at UCLA the last three seasons. “In L.A., pumpkin patches are typically in parking lots. This one was on a beautiful apple orchard and they had pony rides and they had a corn maze.”

For Alukonis, in her third year at USC after four seasons at UCLA, the time change on trips to the Midwest was something new. On a September visit to Indiana, she originally balked at an unworkable practice schedule her team was given before realizing she hadn’t converted the time.

“Every away trip is going to have a different challenge. You’ve never been there before,” she said. “In the Pac-12, you kind of got to know everybody and every place. It has been enjoyable [but] it’s different for sure.”

Now both teams face the challenge of the conference tournament, where they could meet again. Aozasa, who graciously congratulated USC on its first outright conference title — it shared one with California and UCLA in 1998 — said her team also welcomes the chance at redemption.

“Obviously you never want to lose. But it’s obviously better to lose when it does not end your season,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the Big Ten tournament and the NCAAs.

“We would love to be the team holding the trophy. But it’s nice it’s staying in L.A.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.