[OCcardinal]

This was quite sad. I'm so used to tuning in to Women's soccer later in the tournament, but Covid and then 2 early exits have broken that tradition.  Hope this young team can do even better next year.

That low #3 seed was a killer. We've had bad luck with the draws the last two years. Each time we lost to a team that had played in the College Cup championship the season before.  BYU had gotten to the final as a 4 seed and Santa Clara had WON the championship as an 11 seed.  Their coaches know how to develop them during the season and prepare them for the tournament. 

Meanwhile, although we were deep, most of our best players were impacted by one thing or another.  Doms missed time with the passing of her father and (understandably) had not quite returned to top form. Kitahata, our top sophomore (and a world class player, as evidenced by her performance at the U20 CONCACAF tournament) needed to stop out to address the mental health impact of losing Katie Meyer (which I'm sure other players were impacted by too).  We lost our top freshman forward Allie Montoya (the #2 forward in her class) to a season ending injury and our #1 recruit frosh (Elise Evans) has been out for weeks. Though Evans started yesterday she was nowhere near 100%.  Plus, during the game, we lost Senior and former Gatorade national player of the year, Kennedy Wesley, who, as an outside back always plays an important part of advancing the ball.  She also is an excellent PK shooter (she scored her PK in the championship game as a freshman in 2019) and I'm sure she would have been the one to take that 5th penalty had she not been injured.

If you asked me the teams I would absolutely not want to have faced in the first two rounds of the 2020 and 2021 tournaments, I would have said Santa Clara and BYU. And if you asked me before this season which field players I would least want out (or have be less than 100%), it would have been exactly those 5 players (Doms, Kitahata, Evans, Montoya and Wesley). Just bad breaks all around.

So I wouldn't read the last 2 years' results as suggesting there is anything fundamentally wrong with the program. Moreover, we should be in ridiculously good shape next year.  Our terrific young players will be more experienced and we've got the #1 ranked recruiting class coming in, which includes overall #1 recruit Alyssa Thompson (a forward who has had multiple recent caps on the full women's national team), Mia Bhuta and Shae Harvey (two extremely talented midfielders who looked brilliant in the recent U17 World Cup, with Bhuta scoring an absolute golazo from distance with her left and Harvey scoring 4 goals in one of the games), plus a couple of additional top 30 recruits. In addition, 4 of our 6 seniors are apparently coming back for their COVID year.  It hasn't been announced yet which ones, but hopefully that group will include Wesley and Doms.  How could they skip the opportunity to play on a team with Thompson on it, right?

[OCcardinal]

This was quite sad. I'm so used to tuning in to Women's soccer later in the tournament, but Covid and then 2 early exits have broken that tradition.  Hope this young team can do even better next year.

That low #3 seed was a killer. We've had bad luck with the draws the last two years. Each time we lost to a team that had played in the College Cup championship the season before.  BYU had gotten to the final as a 4 seed and Santa Clara had WON the championship as an 11 seed.  Their coaches know how to develop them during the season and prepare them for the tournament. 

Meanwhile, although we were deep, most of our best players were impacted by one thing or another.  Doms missed time with the passing of her father and (understandably) had not quite returned to top form. Kitahata, our top sophomore (and a world class player, as evidenced by her performance at the U20 CONCACAF tournament) needed to stop out to address the mental health impact of losing Katie Meyer (which I'm sure other players were impacted by too).  We lost our top freshman forward Allie Montoya (the #2 forward in her class) to a season ending injury and our #1 recruit frosh (Elise Evans) has been out for weeks. Though Evans started yesterday she was nowhere near 100%.  Plus, during the game, we lost Senior and former Gatorade national player of the year, Kennedy Wesley, who, as an outside back always plays an important part of advancing the ball.  She also is an excellent PK shooter (she scored her PK in the championship game as a freshman in 2019) and I'm sure she would have been the one to take that 5th penalty had she not been injured.

If you asked me the teams I would absolutely not want to have faced in the first two rounds of the 2020 and 2021 tournaments, I would have said Santa Clara and BYU. And if you asked me before this season which field players I would least want out (or have be less than 100%), it would have been exactly those 5 players (Doms, Kitahata, Evans, Montoya and Wesley). Just bad breaks all around.

So I wouldn't read the last 2 years' results as suggesting there is anything fundamentally wrong with the program. Moreover, we should be in ridiculously good shape next year.  Our terrific young players will be more experienced and we've got the #1 ranked recruiting class coming in, which includes overall #1 recruit Alyssa Thompson (a forward who has had multiple recent caps on the full women's national team), Mia Bhuta and Shae Harvey (two extremely talented midfielders who looked brilliant in the recent U17 World Cup, with Bhuta scoring an absolute golazo from distance with her left and Harvey scoring 4 goals in one of the games), plus a couple of additional top 30 recruits. In addition, 4 of our 6 seniors are apparently coming back for their COVID year.  It hasn't been announced yet which ones, but hopefully that group will include Wesley and Doms.  How could they skip the opportunity to play on a team with Thompson on it, right?