Note: This story is part of Deseret News sports team’s Flashback Friday series, which revisits memorable moments involving Utah teams.
NCAA women’s soccer highlights rarely appear on national sports shows, but BYU’s match-up with New Mexico on Nov. 5, 2009, made the cut because of how violent things got on the field.
The videos shared on the broadcasts — and then replayed again and again on YouTube by incredulous sports fans — showed New Mexico junior Elizabeth Lambert tackling, kicking and punching her BYU opponents. She even yanked one player, Kassidy Shumway, down to the ground by her ponytail.
“What began as a physical — and sometimes brutal — women’s soccer match between top-seeded BYU and fourth-seeded New Mexico in Thursday’s Mountain West Conference semifinals exploded into a national story on Friday because of the performance of Lobo junior defender Elizabeth Lambert,” the Deseret News reported at the time.
To be clear, Lambert wasn’t the only one playing dirty, but, in videos of the match, she sticks out like a sore thumb. As a result, she became the subject of online petitions and Facebook pages, which called for her to be banned from college soccer.
“I think the way the video came out, it did make me look like a monster. That’s not the type of player I am,” Lambert told The New York Times in her first interview after the game.
She explained in the same interview that some of the commentary on the match had a sexist undertone.
“I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it,” Lambert said. “It’s more expected for men to go out there and be rough.”
In addition to criticizing Lambert for her aggressive tactics, commentators questioned why her coach and referees failed to intervene.
“How could (Joe) Pimentel, a referee of some standing locally, stand by when such appalling and deliberate foul play was afoot? He issued one yellow card in the match, for possibly the least of Lambert’s misdeeds, a trip on (BYU’s Carlee) Payne. He took no action against Lambert’s teammate who in that same incident kicked the ball into Payne’s face as she hit the ground,” The New York Times reported.
Payne, who scored the lone goal in the game, told the Deseret News in 2009 that both teams clearly wanted the win badly.
“It was a very tough game, very physical,” she said. “They wanted it as badly as we did but we were able to get the goal.”
With the win, BYU advanced to the conference championship against San Diego State. They lost that game 1-0, according to Deseret News coverage.
Lambert was eventually suspended for two games for her behavior during the semifinals match, and she wasn’t eligible to return to the field until the fall of 2010, according to The Associated Press.
In a 2014 article on other controversies involving New Mexico’s women’s soccer program, The Equalizer noted that Lambert’s senior season didn’t go as well as it had been predicted to before the infamous hair-pulling game.
“During her senior season, Lambert played a total of 98 minutes — the equivalent of a little over one full game, when in 2009 she played in all 21 games and led her teammates in minutes played,” The Equalizer reported.