The Ohio State women’s soccer team is one win away from the program’s first-ever Big Ten championship.

On the team’s senior day, the Buckeyes routed Indiana, 6-0, to remain first in conference standings.

The six-goal margin, by far the team’s largest in conference play, was not something coach Lori Walker expected.

“It’s very unusual to have that kind of margin in any Big Ten game,” Walker said. “We are just going to enjoy it and know that this isn’t the way it goes every day.”

In what has become the norm for OSU this season, the first half of Sunday’s game was played almost exclusively on the Buckeyes’ offensive end.

In the 22nd minute, and on the Buckeyes fifth corner kick of the game, senior Ashley Bowyer scored the game’s first goal. The kick was taken by junior Lauren Steuer before Bowyer headed it in for her fourth goal of the season.

Less than two minutes later, the Buckeyes struck again when sophomore Paige Maxwell took a pass from freshman Tiffany Cameron and beat the goalkeeper to increase the lead to 2-0. The goal was Maxwell’s sixth of the season, a team high.

OSU added to that lead early in the second half, again off of a Steuer corner kick. Unlike her first, Steuer’s kick needed no help from her teammates as she was able to deflect the ball off a defender and into the net. 

The Buckeyes, who hadn’t scored more than three goals in any conference game prior to Sunday, put in three more in the second half to earn the shutout victory.

The win marked the Buckeyes’ 14th of the season, the second-highest total in school history. For Steuer, it was important to send the seniors out on top.

“This is a huge win for us, especially for our seniors,” Steuer said. “We wanted to go out and have an amazing game for them and show them how much they mean to us.”

The Buckeyes travel to East Lansing Friday to play Michigan State for a conference championship. Although her team will be favored against the Spartans, Walker knows that, in this conference, nothing is a given.

“You take nothing for granted,” Walker said. “We have to show up, and we have to earn it.”