Thursday Night Report Card: Women's Soccer
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.