photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

KU head coach Nate Lie chats with players after the team's win over Missouri State on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence.

In its first road match of the year, the Kansas soccer team was held to a scoreless draw by Utah State on Sunday afternoon at the Chuck & Gloria Bell Soccer Field in Logan, Utah.

KU had scored nine total goals in its trio of season-opening victories at Rock Chalk Park, but couldn’t find the back of the net against the Aggies and their goalkeeper Taylor Rath. She had four saves on the day, including a leaping effort to tip out a threatening high-arcing shot from KU freshman Marit McLaughlin, which was the Jayhawks’ only shot on target in the first half.

“Both teams had some quality but they had heavy legs,” KU coach Nate Lie said in a press release. “I think this was especially hard for us in the first road game and the altitude. You can empathize with the players if their gas tank wasn’t full. I think it was a fair result. I’d like to think that this is a game that we expect to win, but we didn’t do enough today.”

KU totaled 10 shots on the game, led by three from Jillian Gregorski as she, McLaughlin, Caroline Castans and Kate Langfelder put one each on target against Rath. Much of the action on that side occurred late, as Castans’ attempt came in the 85th minute, and Gregorski’s shot was the final shot by either team, arriving in the 89th minute off a corner kick.

“It’s a good sign for our team that we improved over the game, especially after not being great the last couple second halves (of previous games),” Lie said.

At the other end, the Jayhawks’ goalie Sophie Dawe kept her second clean sheet of the season and made four saves of her own, all in the first 62 minutes. Utah State forward Kaylie Chambers was the only player to try multiple shots for the Aggies.

The tie was just the second 0-0 match of Lie’s tenure as head coach, after KU played to another scoreless draw last Sept. 5 on the road at Vanderbilt.

“We came here to win,” Lie said. “We leave with a tie which is slightly disappointing, but we’ve got to be better against teams of this caliber if we expect to get a result.”

Utah State, last year’s Mountain West regular-season and tournament champion, went to 1-1-1 after its surprising loss to Pacific — a team that had lost 12 straight matches — last Thursday.

KU, meanwhile, is now 3-0-1 entering one of the season’s most anticipated contests: a home match against Florida State at Rock Chalk Park on Thursday at 7 p.m.

The Seminoles are ranked No. 2 in the nation by TopDrawerSoccer (KU is No. 23), though they have been idle since Aug. 17. FSU won national titles in 2014, 2018, 2021 and 2023 and is 56-5-7 overall since head coach Brian Pensky took the reigns in 2022, although the Seminoles went down on penalties to Vanderbilt in a second-round upset last year.