It’s been a minute since the Notre Dame women’s soccer team last traveled to Syracuse for a match. The Irish haven’t visited the Orange since October 2018 and haven’t opposed them in any venue since 2021.
This weekend, Notre Dame will make the trip out to central New York to begin the regular season’s final month. The Irish enter Saturday’s upcoming match ranked 17th in the United Soccer Coaches poll with an overall record of 7-1-2 and a mark of 1-0-2 within Atlantic Coast Conference play.
Notre Dame last played one week ago in a Thursday night contest against NC State. Despite dominating possession time and the overall flow of the match at home, the Irish ended up in a 1-1 draw with the Wolfpack. They head to Syracuse still unbeaten in road games having most recently defeated Virginia by a 1-0 score on Sept. 22.
Freshman forward Izzy Engle still leads Notre Dame and ranks second in the ACC with 10 goals on the season. In terms of goals per game, she rates inside the nation’s top five. Freshman midfielder Grace Restovich, who tops the Irish with seven assists on the year, also sits within the country’s top seven players with 0.7 assists per match. Sophomore goalkeeper Atlee Olofson, who started last week’s draw against NC State, currently leads all qualified goalkeepers in Division I women’s soccer with a .929 save percentage.
Syracuse comes into the weekend off to a rough start in ACC play. The Orange possess a 6-6-1 overall record but are winless at 0-5-0 within league action. Now, Syracuse has faced one of the toughest conference schedules among ACC teams to start, with all five losses coming to opponents rated inside the top 50 in RPI. Over the last two weeks, the Orange have dropped back-to-back home matches against No. 3 North Carolina and No. 4 Wake Forest. With Notre Dame currently ranked as well, the road ahead isn’t getting much easier for Syracuse.
Since the pandemic, Syracuse has traveled a rocky road. The Orange went 4-12-1 in 2021, going without a win or draw in ACC play. They made decent improvement in 2022, going 1-6-3 in the ACC and 8-7-3 overall for their most wins since the 2016 season. However, as injuries and personnel shifts piled up last year, Syracuse fell back down to the bottom of the ACC standings, going 0-9-1 with an overall record of 2-14-2. The Orange have not qualified for the NCAA Tournament since 2001.
Syracuse began this season with one of its primary strengths returning in goal. Junior Shea Vanderbosch played in 34 games and made 195 saves in her first two seasons, posting strong save percentages of .815 as a freshman and .729 as a sophomore. This season’s numbers lie right in between her previous totals, as Vanderbosch owns a .773 save percentage and a 1.62 goals against average.
Erin Flurey, last year’s leading Orange goal scorer, is also back and contributing to this season’s Syracuse squad. The redshirt junior has three goals and a team-high 30 shot attempts but has not registered a point in over three weeks as Syracuse has scored just once in its last four matches. Experienced redshirt junior Ashley Rauch has taken on a larger offensive role, leading the Orange with four goals and nine points. In three years coming into this season, Rauch had posted only four total goals and 11 total points.
Notre Dame has never lost to Syracuse, carrying an all-time record of 17-0-1 against the Orange. Since head coach Nate Norman’s arrival, the Irish are a perfect 4-0-0 with a goal differential of 14-1 in the series.
Notre Dame and Syracuse will collide inside SU Soccer Stadium at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
