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The road woes of the Hawaii women’s soccer team came to a timely end on Sunday at the farthest destination in the Western Athletic Conference.
Junior forward Skye Shimabukuro scored on a penalty kick in overtime to give the Rainbow Wahine a 1-0 win at Louisiana Tech in their final WAC regular-season game.
UH (5-11-1, 4-2-1 WAC) will be the third seed in the WAC tournament in Fresno, Calif., and open against sixth-seeded New Mexico State on Thursday. The Wahine had a chance for the second seed and a first-round bye in the tourney, but needed Fresno State to lose on Sunday. FSU tied top-seeded Utah State.
"We’ve had to fight for everything that we’ve got, so why would today be any different?" UH coach Michele Nagamine said in a phone interview from Ruston, La.
"We finished third, but we could have finished seventh (as preseason polls predicted). The team persevered through a lot of tough situations."
The victory snapped a school-record 11-game road losing streak. In the 98th minute, freshman forward Tiana Fujimoto drew a foul in the LaTech penalty box and Shimabukuro delivered the game-ending score.
"They took her out. It was a legitimate penalty kick," Nagamine said.
LaTech (8-8-4, 1-6) outshot UH 13-7, but junior goalkeeper Kanani Taaca tied her season high in saves with eight.
The third-place regular-season finish was UH’s highest since 2003.