The Litter Box

I kind of feel like it’s cheating to give the Chico State women’s soccer A’s across the board after one game, especially when that one game came against what E-R prep writer Leland Gordon referred to as the “sacrificial lamb” of the Wildcats’ schedule, Notre Dame de Namur.

But obviously Chico State played well, earning a 5-0 win over the Argonauts to open up its season, and while the games certainly will get tougher, there are some good things Kim Sutton’s club can take from this one. Let’s not quite call this an official Report Card just yet (despite this entry’s headline). It’s more like a progress report.

UPS
New faces in good places.
I’m starting to think that the Ups/Downs categories aren’t such a good idea, considering that I up-case them both and the “UPS” looks like a random insertion of a parcel delivery company. That’s something for me to work on.

The Wildcats, though, have to get used to the idea of playing without the likes of Katherine Bagwell, Kari Gonzales, Ashley Gunther and Whitney MacDonald, all graduated All-Region players. That is going to be probably a little easier to do if they keep getting solid play from the few additions to the club. Looking at the Chico State roster, there is definitely experience there, but looking at Thursday night’s game, some of the biggest moments came from freshman Lisa Webster (two goals, one assist) and transfer Brittney Doty, who scored on the Wildcats’ first shot of the season. Sidenote: For about 10 minutes, Chico State was on pace to shoot 1.000. Sadly, only five of the 25 shots found the net, but it was neat while it lasted.
Dara Karnofsky, it’s worth mentioning, was dangerously close to a pair of goals, and I don’t think I’m alone in guessing that she could pan out to be a very solid forward for this team.

Movement in the middle.
Sutton would probably write this a lot better than I could, but given that my seat is also right at midfield, I feel somewhat qualified in saying that the Wildcats did a nice job of ball movement. It will be interesting to see if they can win as many balls in the middle once they get playing against stronger opposition, but for now it looks like this will be a strength.
Defensively, Carly Atkins was especially good at parlaying turnovers and defensive play into offensive production.

Reaching deep.
Sutton will be able to spell her starters with quality, it appears. She really crooned about the play of Mallory Maughan, a transfer from Hawaii, and Webster. Kelsey Ikemoto came in and, in less than two minutes, scored a goal; she later added an assist.

DOWNS
Oh, come on.
I’m not necessarily a happy-go-lucky type, but I won’t Scrooge up the place and find things to rag on in a 5-0 shutout. What should I say? New keeper Natalie Bensky should have made more saves? The Argos only got off one shot, and it wasn’t even close to the posts. Sutton mentioned there were some “glaring” things to her that needed fixing — “organizational things” — but I’m not a soccer coach and I’ll assume I don’t know what those things are.
Oh, look, I’m right.

Posted by Travis Souders at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was going to postpone writing this blog until later tonight, but the insufferable Frank Caliendo is lording his pathetic exploits on the office television and I can’t find the remote.

The CCAA apparently thinks pretty highly of Chico State soccer; the women were selected to win the 2008 conference title by CCAA’s head coaches. Why not? The Wildcats have won the North Division three times in the last four years and won the North and the overall conference title last year. It is seemingly based on first-place votes alone, and Chico State received four of them while Cal State Dominguez Hills (No. 13 in the NSCAA/adidas preseason national poll) got three. Curious as to why the Wildcats are No. 24 nationally, but those rankings never stay the same.

What I find interesting is that the Chico State men got a nod for second in the North, which equates to a conference tournament spot should they actually end up there. Apparently the coaches in the CCAA are impressed with the add of Felipe Restrepo at coach and the good nucleus of talent that often inexplicably struggled to score last year. Restrepo, who reminded us in his introductory press conference that he likes to score goals, could be the one to change that trend.

Sticking with our rankings theme, the volleyball squad got a nod at No. 25, which I frankly find to be generous given the way the Wildcats played down the stretch last season. But who knows? Maybe the talent that allowed them to reach the NCAA Division II tourney last year will manifest itself over a more extended period this season. As we found out last year, the CCAA is an absolute meat grinder in terms of volleyball talent, with Cal State San Bernardino at No. 4, UC San Diego at No. 22 and Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State L.A. receiving top-25 votes.

It’s about three weeks until CCAA play starts, but the fall semester begins on Monday and that will signal the first chance to get a look at any of the teams (first assignment is women’s soccer on Thursday). Prepare yourself for the Litter Box’s most infamous misnomer, the Wildcat Report Cards.

Posted by Travis Souders at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just finished up entering the last of the Chico State fall schedules into our local calendar, and it was a really great way to get me nice and pumped for the semester. Women’s soccer is the first to begin, with an exhibition tonight against Sacramento State, and while it’s not official, it officially serves to get us thinking about the rest of the upcoming events.

So, from a schedule-entryman’s (not a word, I don’t care) point of view, here are a few of the more intriguing matchups that we could see this season — at least on paper.

WOMEN’S SOCCER
It’s usually hard to slap an estimate on just which teams are going to be good beforehand each year; luckily, the NSCAA/adidas preseason national rankings do that for us. The Wildcats cracked that list at No. 24 thanks to an NCAA Division II tournament berth and a CCAA title last season, but they’re not returning as favorites in the Far West Region or the conference. Frequent Wildcat nemesis Seattle Pacific (No. 4) of the GNAC and CCAA rival Cal State Dominguez Hills (No. 13) are well ahead of Chico State. The Wildcats will host the Toros on Sept. 10, and get the challenging task of taking on the Falcons in Seattle on Sept. 6.

Seattle Pacific beat Chico State 1-0 last year in one of the best soccer showings Chico got to see in 2007; the Wildcats went 2-0 against Cal State Dominguez Hills. Watch out for Oct. 3; that’s when Chico State will face Cal State L.A., the team that eliminated the Wildcats from the national tourney last year. All told, the season series went 1-1-1, with no regulation goals scored between the two. Bad blood is good sports.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Wildcats finish this year’s CCAA schedule with three straight road games, which may or may not play a factor. Chico State was 10-2 overall in matchups away from University Soccer Stadium, though their last conference contest is against Sonoma State, a club that took two from the Wildcats last year.

MEN’S SOCCER
Because the season itself is going to be one of mystery and at least half of it is going to be the players and new coach Felipe Restrepo feeling each other out, it’s difficult to single out any one game as signigicant. My initial feeling tells me that by the time the men get down to Rohnert Park for preseason-ranked No. 6 Sonoma State — Nov. 2, to be exact — Chico State will be on the fringe of competition and needing to win that game. I don’t see the Wildcats, at first glance, mowing through the CCAA, not with the Seawolves in the North Division and No. 11 Cal State Dominguez Hills also in the mix.

MEN’S GOLF
The Wildcats have a history of inviting strong fields to their home tournament, the InterWest Chico State Invite, at Butte Creek Country Club. Last fall, the event got dumped on with rain, Art Golden, III tore up his knee and Chico State generally felt like it could have done better under new coach T.L. Brown (he was going by Travis at the time; perhaps this will change his luck). The home tourneys, because they’re so rare, are always the ones to watch for, and with Lucas Delgado and Golden coming back, the Wildcats appear to have pretty decent hopes of a top-three showing.

VOLLEYBALL
There is definitely intrigue with this team, throughout the schedule, but what I am itching to look at is trends. As hot as the Wildcats started their season — they were 13-4 at one point — Chico State dropped seven of its last eight matches in what was, retrospectively, a pretty hearty collapse.

The big matches this year will, if you’re going comparatively, be the big schools from Southern California — UC San Diego, Cal State L.A. and Cal State San Bernardino, which at one point was the No. 2 team in the country last season. I say “big” because they sign giant females with long arms who can jump high, the antithesis of Wildcat volleyball and a formula that, when done well, has been tough for Chico State to beat. The early going could make or break the Wildcats before November: Sept. 19 at the Seawolves (who come to Chico on Oct. 25), Sept. 27 at Cal State L.A., Oct. 3 at UC San Diego. The Cal Poly Pomona Broncos aren’t slouches either; they trucked the Wildcats twice last year and will offer chances at revenge well before Chico State’s CCAA stretch run.

That one isn’t pretty, either, as the Wildcats play their final four conference games on the road, not a comfortable place for Chico State in 2007: The Wildcats were 9-10 in gyms not called “Acker.”

Posted by Travis Souders at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s been several months since I’ve had a good old-fashioned adrenaline rush from this reporting business, and that’s expected, I suppose, from the summer months around here. It’s angering, since summer used to be my favorite season and now it’s turned into a giant nap.

So, as you can imagine, it was both pleasantly and excruciatingly harrowing for a good couple of hours Friday to try to track down a real person who would confirm or deny that apparently former Chico State women’s basketball coach Molly Goodenbour is bolting for UC Irvine.

It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but the fact that Bob Olson at UC Irvine OK’d the release of the news means that Monday, the Anteaters and Goodenbour will have a shiny new agreement to sign and a press statement to release. But we media types are impatient people, a hellish mix when sometimes the only thing you can hope for is a return phone call. Luckily, I got that call from Olson.

Crazy blood-pumping aside, what does this mean for the Wildcats? We won’t really know until Monday, but obviously the search for a new coach has a spot near the top of the docket. Is Brian Fogel sticking around? The assistant did apply for the men’s head job, losing out to Clink, and this would make sense since he’s already here and it is a head job.

The Goodenbour news doesn’t exactly surprise me, because you’ve got to figure that it’s going to be difficult to hang onto a coach of that caliber if you’re a Division II school. It’s just the way it works. There are a lot of exceptional coaches at Chico State, to be sure, and that some of the best have stuck around because of dedication to the town/university is admittedly a point of frequent wonder to me. What will get lost in all of this, I’m sure, is that while it’s clear now that Chico State was a stepping stone for Goodenbour, the Wildcats benefited from it just as much, if not more, than she did.

A lot will be made of the controversy that happened while she was here, but it was more than a year ago. What Goodenbour’s legacy should be, in my opinion, is that of a transitional coach who recruited a boatload of talent, left her impression on what Division II basketball could be like in the CCAA and left that talent and vision behind.

Posted by Travis Souders at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)