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The Honolulu Advertiser
Updated at 6:58 p.m., Friday, October 24, 2008

Soccer: USC nearly sets NCAA women's attendance record

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Four hundred more fans, and the USC Trojans would have boasted the largest crowd ever to attend an NCAA regular season women's soccer game.

Instead, the defending national champions had to settle for a school-record 7,804 people in the stands, but a 2-1 loss tonight to the rival UCLA Bruins.

Kristina Larsen scored both goals for UCLA (14-0-2), in the 26th and 60th minutes. Megan Ohai tied the game in the 49th minute.

USC (12-3-1), which had sold more than 6,000 tickets to the game by Thursday afternoon, moved the contest from the 1,000-seat McAllister Field to the 93,000-seat Coliseum.

With a large walk-up crowd, the game would have eclipsed the NCAA regular-season attendance mark of 8,204 set in 1996 by Texas A&M and North Carolina.

The all-time attendance record was set in 1999 when 14,410 fans watched the national championship game between North Carolina and Notre Dame in San Jose's Spartan Stadium.