First winning season still attainable for USU soccer team
It’s been nearly a month (Sept. 29) since the Utah State University women’s soccer team won a game, and now would be a good time to reverse its fortunes.
A winning season, which has never happened for USU’s soccer program, depends on it.
The Aggies (6-8-3, 0-5-1) have three games left to make program history, two of which come this weekend against two teams who haven’t won a Big West Conference game.
The Aggies will have to capitalize on each opportunity to reach the ever-elusive mark.
Utah State will travel to Stockton, Calif. Friday to take on the University of Pacific (8-5-2, 0-3-2) in its first night game of the season.
“It is a little different,” said Aggie Head Coach Jen Kennedy Croft. “It makes for a long day. We are leaving on Friday instead of Thursday, so that will make it less long. But it might be tough because we’re traveling on the day we play. It’s also kind of exciting because [we’re] playing under lights and [Pacific] usually gets a fairly good crowd. You do have to watch when the ball is in the air. It’s a little different judgement-wise.”
USU will then face the Cal State Northridge Matadors (1-12-1, 0-4-1) Sunday afternoon.
After beating Nevada 1-0 in their first game of the season, the Matadors went on to lose 12 straight before tying a match last week.
Northridge and USU have met only one other time, coming last season in a 2-0 Matador win.
“There’s nothing to lose,” said senior Aggie defender Megan Tanner. “[We want to] go out and play hard and leave it all on the field.”
Croft has frequently mentioned USU’s inability to keep its mind focused on the game throughout the entire game. This problem led her to have the team meet before last weekend’s matches with Richard Gordon, a sports psychology professor at Utah State.
“He got us thinking of how those mental lapses happen and why and how to prevent them from happening,” Croft said. “We’ve tried to implement some of the stuff, [but] we’re still really struggling [five minutes after] a ball is put in the net.
“In soccer that is very common,” she said. “About 80 percent of the goals are scored within those five minutes of another goal being scored. It’s things that other teams struggle with as well. If we can find out what triggers us we can win some games.”
Aggie striker Brigid Turner said, “I’m looking for us to come together as a team, and feel good about the whole 90 minutes and to feel like we played our best the whole game and didn’t let down or have any mental lapses.”
-samhis@cc.usu.edu