Irish youngsters come through again

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Nov 18, 2012

[FLORIDA-NOTRE DAME] Rebecca Twining and Lauren Bohaboy scored goals midway through each half as Notre Dame won, 2-0, at Florida on Sunday to move into the final eight of the NCAA Division I Women's Tournament for the eighth time in the last nine years.

The Fighting Irish will return to Florida take on Florida State Friday in Tallahassee.

Twining gave Notre Dame all the offense it would need with her third goal of the season in the 20th minute off a corner kick from freshman Brittany Von Rueden.

Bohaboy then added the insurance goal in the 71st minute, weaving through the Florida defense before opening a gap near the penalty spot to drive a low left-footed shot that beat goalkeeper Taylor Burke.

“I’m just extremely proud of this young group of players,” said Irish coach Randy Waldrum, who started five freshmen against Florida. “We’ve gone through the year with 12 freshmen and as many as six or seven starting throughout the year for us, so it’s been a big learning curve for these guys, but I’m really proud of the way they’ve continued to grow each week."

Freshman goalkeeper Elyse Hight made four saves, including excellent stops on Annie Speese and Erika Tymrak.

“One of the things that we’ve been really good at all year is defense,” Waldrum added. “Today, I thought we had to bend a whole lot defensively because they threw a lot at us, but I felt like we never really broke. We talked about having some patience on our defending. They were going to have the ball a bit, but we had to be patient and we’d pick our times to counter out of that, and we were really good with that today.”
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