BYU ahead Kassidy C. Shumway, heart, is pulled to the bottom by New Mexico defender Elizabeth Lambert (No.15), proper, as she tries to keep up possession throughout the second half of a school soccer match in Provo, on Nov. 5, 2009. NCAA girls’s soccer highlights hardly ever seem on nationwide sports activities exhibits, however BYU’s match-up with New Mexico on Nov. 5, 2009, made the lower due to how violent issues acquired on the sphere. Patrick Smith, The Day by day Herald through The Related Press
Word: This story is a part of Deseret Information sports activities crew’s Flashback Friday collection, which revisits memorable moments involving Utah groups.
NCAA girls’s soccer highlights hardly ever seem on nationwide sports activities exhibits, however BYU’s match-up with New Mexico on Nov. 5, 2009, made the lower due to how violent issues acquired on the sphere.
The movies shared on the broadcasts — after which replayed repeatedly on YouTube by incredulous sports activities followers — confirmed New Mexico junior Elizabeth Lambert tackling, kicking and punching her BYU opponents. She even yanked one participant, Kassidy Shumway, all the way down to the bottom by her ponytail.
“What started as a bodily — and generally brutal — girls’s soccer match between top-seeded BYU and fourth-seeded New Mexico in Thursday’s Mountain West Convention semifinals exploded right into a nationwide story on Friday due to the efficiency of Lobo junior defender Elizabeth Lambert,” the Deseret Information reported on the time.
To be clear, Lambert wasn’t the one one taking part in soiled, however, in movies of the match, she stands proud like a sore thumb. Because of this, she turned the topic of on-line petitions and Fb pages, which referred to as for her to be banned from faculty soccer.
“I feel the way in which the video got here out, it did make me appear to be a monster. That’s not the kind of participant I'm,” Lambert instructed The New York Instances in her first interview after the sport.
She defined in the identical interview that among the commentary on the match had a sexist undertone.
“I undoubtedly really feel as a result of I'm a feminine it did result in much more consideration than if a male have been to do it,” Lambert mentioned. “It’s extra anticipated for males to go on the market and be tough.”
Along with criticizing Lambert for her aggressive techniques, commentators questioned why her coach and referees did not intervene.
“How might (Joe) Pimentel, a referee of some standing regionally, stand by when such appalling and deliberate foul play was afoot? He issued one yellow card within the match, for presumably the least of Lambert’s misdeeds, a visit on (BYU’s Carlee) Payne. He took no motion towards Lambert’s teammate who in that very same incident kicked the ball into Payne’s face as she hit the bottom,” The New York Instances reported.
Payne, who scored the lone purpose within the recreation, instructed the Deseret Information in 2009 that each groups clearly wished the win badly.
“It was a really powerful recreation, very bodily,” she mentioned. “They wished it as badly as we did however we have been in a position to get the purpose.”
With the win, BYU superior to the convention championship towards San Diego State. They misplaced that recreation 1-0, in line with Deseret Information protection.
Lambert was finally suspended for 2 video games for her conduct throughout the semifinals match, and he or she wasn’t eligible to return to the sphere till the autumn of 2010, in line with The Related Press.
In a 2014 article on different controversies involving New Mexico’s girls’s soccer program, The Equalizer famous that Lambert’s senior season didn’t go in addition to it had been predicted to earlier than the notorious hair-pulling recreation.
“Throughout her senior season, Lambert performed a complete of 98 minutes — the equal of just a little over one full recreation, when in 2009 she performed in all 21 video games and led her teammates in minutes performed,” The Equalizer reported.