After an entire first half with many near-perfect attempts but no goals on the field against St. John’s, the Georgetown women’s soccer team was itching to get on the scoreboard and take control of last Tuesday’s game. Minutes into the second half, sophomore defender Courtney Kent came off the bench to capitalize on a throw-in from freshman midfielder Samantha Baker.
Heading Baker’s throw into the goal, Kent scored the Hoyas’ lone goal of the game, defeating St. John’s 1-0. The victory marked Georgetown’s eleventh win in a season that most had predicted to be mediocre at best.
Coming back to the Hilltop in August, the Hoyas were faced with the loss of eight seniors. Their dominant sophomore forward Ingrid Wells, who was named to the NCAA women’s Division I All-America Second Team last year, took the season off to train with the women’s U.S. under-20 soccer team. The Hoyas’ other star forward, graduate student Sara Jordan, who led the team in goals last year, injured herself in the first weeks of the school year. The norovirus outbreak, which spurred an athletic department-wide freeze on all play and practice, occurred a week before the team’s toughest game of the season against Notre Dame. The list of struggles goes on, but the Georgetown women’s soccer team is not focused on this season’s hardships.
“They just seem to get on with it,” head coach Dave Nolan said. “That is one thing that has really impressed me because we would have had all the excuses in the world to have an average season, and the kids would be very justified in saying, ‘Well, what did you expect, a, b, c, and d,’ and I haven’t heard that from them. I haven’t heard it once. There hasn’t been a crutch once.”
Most of the girls on the team shrug off what could have been considered paralyzing losses.
Instead, the Hoyas have turned this season into arguably the most successful one the program has ever seen, trumping last year’s all-time shut-out record. They beat Villanova at Villanova; for the first time in Georgetown women’s soccer history, they won against Louisville; for the second time in nine years they trumped Rutgers. Currently ranked 23rd in the nation and tied for second in the Big East with West Virginia, Hoya women’s soccer remained undefeated for nine weeks and finished the season with a 13-3-2 (8-3 Big East) record.
This weekend, the Hoyas will play their first Big East Tournament game against the University of Connecticut, and the team looks to perform well enough to snag a spot in the NCAA Tournament, which is set to begin November 17.
“If we can beat UConn, I think that will be what gets us into the NCAA. If we don’t beat them, we’re on the fence,” Nolan said, “Sometimes you fall in and sometimes you fall out.”
Nolan, now in his fifth season as the Hoyas’ head coach and the 2007 Big East Coach of the Year, has put in a lot of effort to see his program excel. The vocal, sarcastic Irish coach has brought in stronger recruits, making high school soccer players start to view Georgetown as a place to succeed at soccer. Starting with the class of 2008, the girls joining the field were top-quality soccer players, including the likes of Jordan, who led last year’s team with seven goals and was named to the All-Big East Second Team.
“Recruiting ultimately is a crap shoot,” Nolan said. “For every kid that works out well, there is a kid who doesn’t work out well. I think last year’s senior class was the first class top to bottom where I felt we had got it right.”
Last year’s season sparked the comeback of Georgetown’s program, and Nolan and the Hoyas picked up the momentum necessary to give Georgetown name recognition as a major contender in the league. This year, seven freshmen joined the team, and four of them immediately stepped into crucial roles on the field. Forward Camille Trujillo and midfielders Kelly D’Ambrisi and Samantha Baker, who was named Big East Rookie of the Year, added depth to the Hoyas offensive unit, while defender Gabby Miller gave strength to the back field.
Despite these successes, the program’s development is a work in progress, and a difficult one at that, according to Nolan.
“I think like anything in sports, [recruitment is] the chicken and the egg,” he said. “You need a great program to attract those kinds of players, and you need those kinds of players to have that great program.”
Nolan added that having an attractive athletic program is not the only hurdle to overcome with recruiting soccer players to Georgetown.
“The academic demands on our players are challenging, and it’s not easy recruiting to a school like ours because the admission demands on our players are tougher than pretty much all of our competitors,” Nolan said. “We try to find those kids who have the ability we need but also have the academic ability to survive and prosper here.”
Despite last year’s momentum, the Hoyas entered this season with relatively low expectations, uncertain how the next few months would play out, but many upperclassmen stepped up to fill the crucial holes left open by graduation.
“There was a little bit of nervousness because we did lose eight players,” senior Stephanie Zare, a flexible team leader who can switch from midfielder to forward as needed, said. “We weren’t really sure what the caliber of our team was going to be, what the personality was going to be. It was really going to be dependent on the incoming class.”
For those returning to the team, the memory of last year’s success was still fresh in their minds.
As much as Nolan tried to emphasize that he did not want to compare this year’s team to last year’s team, he could not avoid the fact that Georgetown’s opponents might not see it the same way.
“I think there was some pressure because teams we beat last year came back this year with a vendetta,” senior defender Laura Snyder said.
Coming off of last year’s success, Georgetown was a target team that other schools considered a big game in their schedules. To the competition, Georgetown remained the team that had dominated in 2007.
The Hoyas proved quite quickly that they still expected to be taken seriously and planned to give even the strongest teams a run for their money.
“From the beginning of the season, tying Maryland and Virginia, two nationally ranked teams, it gives you confidence that you can play against anybody,” junior forward Toni Marie Hudson, who leads the team in goals scored, said. “From that point on I had confidence in our team … you know that if you can stand up against people like these, you will do well in your season.”
Notre Dame, a perennial powerhouse in women’s soccer, faced off against the Hoyas two years ago with their second string. This year, the Hoyas posed a real threat to the Fighting Irish. Both teams went into the October 10 match on North Kehoe Field-which the Hoyas played after a week off because of the norovirus outbreak-with an undefeated record on the line. While the 2005 Hoyas fell to Notre Dame 6-0, this year’s Hoyas not only narrowed the gap to 3-1 but managed to end the first half with a 1-1 tie.
Despite the loss, the squad is not ready to concede complete defeat to the best team in the nation. Looking toward the Big East tournament, the Hoyas want to find themselves in the final game, and the team favored to join them in such a scenario is the Fighting Irish.
“I would love to get a shot at Notre Dame,” Zare said.
In their first two months of preseason, and throughout the first part of the regular season, the Hoyas remained undefeated. The team got off to a promising start in the Big East with their 3-0 away-game victory against Villanova.
“That game gave us a lot of confidence, gave us a boost. And it really started off our Big East season well,” Snyder said.
“It was an ass-kicking,” Zare added.
They experienced their first loss to Notre Dame after the weekend off due to the norovirus outbreak. The break forced the team to reschedule two games into the last two weeks of their regular season. Over the next 17 days the team would play eight Big East Conference games, finishing with a 5-3 record.
After the loss to Notre Dame, the Hoyas went on to beat DePaul and Syracuse the next week , but they suffered two difficult losses on the road against West Virginia and Pittsburgh.
“[The norovirus break] got us away from playing games,” Snyder said. “We weren’t in that game mindset … We went to West Virginia and Pittsburgh, and that weekend was when it all caught up to us. It was a really disappointing two games to lose and very heartbreaking. It was unfortunate that it happened that way.”
Coming off of the combined losses, Nolan said that he was a little worried that the back-to-back games had burned the team out. But the resilient Hoyas returned to Georgetown to defeat St. John’s, then hit the road for their last weekend of regular season play, completing a first-time win against Louisville and a double-overtime triumph over Cincinnati, earning them a first round bye in the Big East Tournament.
“I’ve been very impressed by them,” Nolan said. “They don’t impress me often, but they certainly have impressed me with how they finished the season.”
Although Wells had been the Hoyas’ go-to on the front line, this season’s offense took a position of dominance from day one. But the front field is not alone in its improvements; the defense has developed into a cohesive unit as well.
“The difference between this year and the other years is that we are actually scoring goals now,” senior midfielder Nicole Smith said. “We couldn’t find the net our first couple of years here. We didn’t have the power upfront to do it, and now we find ways to get a goal all the time … instead of being on the defensive side of preparation for games we were looking more towards offensive tactics.”
Along with the aggressive offense, the Hoyas’ defense, anchored by sophomore goalkeeper Jackie DesJardin, has helped lead the team to 11 shut-outs, the program’s all-time high. DesJardin had a four game shut-out streak in the beginning of the season.
“I think our defense has become one of our biggest threats,” senior defender Alex Gargano said. “Our defense has come together, and our midfield has stepped up every game to match our opponent. Even if we have to change our formation or anything, we usually win the midfield in a game.”
The team’s soccer skills aren’t the only qualities that have been integral to the Hoyas’ success. The women also attribute many of their wins to the persistent personalities and fierce commitment.
“I think we have all played on teams that are just talent,” Baker said. “They win because they are just flat-out better. We have been a strong team and a heart-filled team. We try all the time until the last second. Those kind of teams are the ones that are successful.”
Players talk about their shared bond, regardless of class year. Freshman Baker can turn to senior Zare in the midst of a tough game and expect to hear exactly what she needs in order to find the energy necessary to get through the last minutes. The connection shows in the team’s play, where crisp passing and perfect set-ups result from careful anticipation and reading of fellow teammates.
“The level of commitment has changed, too,” Snyder said. “People are committed now to winning games and to achieving goals-not just saying they want to achieve them, but actually achieving them.”
The team has noticed the change in their daily practices. Making the hike up to North Kehoe Field is no longer a chore. Many players choose to stay after practice to put in extra time on their corner kicks or other technical skills. With a relatively small roster of 20 people, every player is expected to contribute, and everyone is capable of doing so.
“There is a difference between good and great teams,” Hudson said. “Even people coming off the bench are making a difference. Everyone is not depending on somebody else to step up. Everybody can take the ropes in their own hands and make a difference.”
The girls have had an extra day off this week to taper in preparation for postseason, with the stakes increasing with each coming game over the next few weeks.
“We are at that place where we can’t afford to get complacent and feel that we have arrived,” Nolan said. “Because as much as we are looking at those one and two spots ahead of us, there are teams one and two spots behind us trying to get where we are.”
Regardless of its postseason performance, perseverance and unprecedented success have defined this year’s team. Nolan, a man not quick to heap praise, cannot dispute the girls’ achievements this season.
“This has been the best team I have ever had at Georgetown,” Nolan said. “I don’t think can really look back with any regrets.”
