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Houston forms a group hug around forward Amanda Adams (22) after her goal during the second half of an NCAA Women\u2019s Soccer game, Friday, August 8, 2025, in Houston, Texas. | Raphael Fernandez\/The Cougar<\/p>\n
In its first home game of the season, Houston soccer dominated St. Mary\u2019s (TX) in style with an emphatic 4-0 victory.<\/p>\n
The Cougars were all gas, all go for the majority of the game, where they racked up 27 shots (nine on goal) while the Rattlers could only muster up two shots all game.<\/p>\n
By halftime, UH had 20 total shots, with seven on goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re building and growing as a team, but the spirits are high and we\u2019re working really hard,\u201d junior forward Adelhia Ghonda said.<\/p>\n
In the first half, Houston gave St. Mary\u2019s (TX) no room to breathe, showcasing the relentless, attacking that head coach Ben Williams set out to build.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Junior midfielder Ava Shannon got the scoring train started in the 12th minute when her free kick from range went sky high and sailed smoothly into the back of the net.<\/p>\n
About a minute later, Ghonda came on board when she received the ball in the midfield, went on a mazy run and hit a powerful shot that rocked the crossbar and went into the net to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
In the 35th minute, great team play inside the Rattlers\u2019 box led to junior forward Joeclyn Chinea putting her shot into the bottom right corner to give the Cougars a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
In the second half, UH may have stepped off the pedal, but they still had enough juice for one more strike in the 89th minute, when Shannon\u2019s deflected cross found the right foot of sophomore midfielder Casey Maddox, who volleyed the ball into the back of the net with authority to cap off the 4-0 victory.<\/p>\n
Houston had three transfers (Shannon, Ghonda and Chinea) score their first goals for UH, showing their acclimation into the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re starting to jell with each other a little bit,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
Houston will look to keep that momentum going when it heads over to Huntsville on Thursday, Aug. 21, to take on the Sam Houston State Bearkats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston forms a group hug around forward Amanda Adams (22) after her goal during the second half of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":155553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[90780,4345,221,358,3187,60931,90781],"class_list":{"0":"post-155552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-ben-williams","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-uh-athletics","14":"tag-uh-soccer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115049461610938174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}