Road woes continue for Wahine soccer team

The Hawaii soccer team ran out of gas on the West Coast.

San Francisco dealt the tired Rainbow Wahine a 2-0 loss on Sunday at the Dons’ Negoesco Stadium, keeping UH scoreless — and winless — on the mainland so far this season.

UH (1-4-1) fell 1-0 at Portland State Friday to begin the road trip.

Sunday’s defeat was easier to take for coach Michele Nagamine; the Dons (4-1-1) of the West Coast Conference were a stronger team in most respects. They outshot the Rainbow Wahine 22-10, and earned 10 corner kicks to none for UH.

UH was the third Big West team that USF shut out at home, along with Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara.

“I’m a lot better today than I was on Friday, because on Friday we were clearly the better team,” Nagamine said in a postgame phone interview. “Today’s (opponent) was very well-coached, very motivated. They did everything better, faster than we did. They outworked us. We struggled a little bit with back-to-back games on that (artificial) turf; you could tell their legs just weren’t really where they needed to be.”

A recurring disappointment for the fifth-year UH coach has been overall team fitness, which has caused her to substitute some of her better players earlier and more often than she would like.

“We’re suffering the brunt of people not doing their jobs over the summer,” she said, estimating that just eight of the team’s 25 players are at an adequate fitness level.

UH’s best chance to score was a 20-yard attempt by midfielder Storm Kenui early in the game when the USF goalkeeper vacated the net, but the ball sailed high.

Wahine keeper Monk Berger (five saves) had a 21st-minute save of a USF penalty kick, the second time in two chances this season Berger deflected such an attempt. And unlike the previous instance against Stanford, the ball didn’t ricochet right back to the shooter for an easy putback.

But USF got goals from Tiara Webb and Alex Alugas in the 35th and 52nd minutes, and the Dons controlled the action comfortably down the stretch.

“We took it to them for a good 20, 25 minutes,” Nagamine said. “But I think there’s just too many of the details that we don’t do well. The concept of support and movement off the ball, after-the-ball transition, we were slow to get underneath it, slow to provide options. And I told the kids, ‘it’s very rare that somebody plays with more heart and determination than we did, and you kind of gave up today. And that’s inexcusable.’ ”

UH resumes action at home Saturday against Cal State Bakersfield of the WAC.