Lucas Gebhart
Editor-in-Chief
There is not one member on this year’s ISU soccer team who has endured a winning season while at ISU.
The team has won a combined 10 games over the last three seasons, which matches its win total from 2014, the last time the Bengal soccer team saw a winning record. That was also the last time ISU went to the Big Sky Conference tournament, which welcomes the top six finishers in the conference.
This season, the conference’s coaches picked ISU to finish last in the Big Sky, which seemed on paper to be a logical choice considering the Bengals have finished in the cellar of the Big Sky in two of the last three seasons.
But this year, the team is looking to emphasize the prefix of the word preseason and prove last year’s late season derailment, which saw the Bengals lose 14 of their last 17, to be a casualty of an old mindset.
“We have to have no excuses,” said senior captain Tristen Spooner. “It doesn’t matter what year you are, by the time you get to this level, you are a Division I player. Everybody has good skill, everybody has good speed, so, really what the mindset comes down to is we are going to have to get rid of excuses and just realize that everybody has a job and that job is to win.”
Spooner, who has appeared in all but one game during her first three years at ISU, along with Meaghan Bare, are the anchors of the back half, which is sprinkled with youth in the middle. Lauren Bollinger and Karlin Wurlitzer, both freshmen, are expected to pick up significant minutes at both the center back positions. Both started in ISU’s two home exhibition games against Utah Valley and Westminster. The Bengals lost both home exhibition games last week, falling 3-1 to Utah Valley last Monday and 2-1 to Westminster, a Division II school out of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference on Friday.
“We are still trying to get them to talk,” said forward Makena Bambei. “Scream at us, say anything, just yell at us. But, they have stepped up in the first few weeks and have gone past our expectations.”
Last year, ISU’s leadership and experience worked from back to front. It started with former team captain Jen McCaw and Spooner, who was a junior, and ended with youth goal scores in Bambei, Brooke Kortekass and Michaela Didericksen, all of whom were sophomores and were the team’s top three goal scores, combining for 75 percent of ISU’s goals in 2017.
“It’s an area that we have been struggling in previously,” Spooner said. “But it’s huge, because we finally have people who we have faith in to put it away and I think that we have leadership coming from up top, which is huge.”
ISU averaged less than a goal per game last season and scored 16 times off 248 shot attempts, good for a 6.5 percentage. But the only player who was lost to graduation on ISU’s frontline last season was Sami Rodriguez, and the Bengals also return most of their midfield. ISU also lost its senior goalkeeper Shawana Hennings, who split time with Katie Hogarth towards the end of last season.
Hogarth, a junior, holds a career save percentage of 75 percent and has been splitting time in the preseason with freshman goalkeeper Laule’a Akana-Phillips. Akana-Phillips started the preseason match against Utah Valley, but gave way to Hogarth at halftime. In the second exhibition games, Hogarth started, but gave way to Akana-Phillips at halftime.
“I think everybody in this conference knows, I’ve been in it long enough, that you never really know what you’re going to get from each team,” Spooner said. “I don’t think teams will overlook us, I think they know that we will come out and give them a challenge, no matter what the score is.”
