With all of the good news about volleyball and men’s soccer this Fall, it would be easy to overlook the major decline in the women’s program this year. The 7-1 trouncing by FSU was the culmination of a very disappointing year.
The big difference between this year’s team and last year’s team, which made a deep run in the NCAA tournament before losing to eventual national champion FSU, was at forward. They lost Amanda West and two of the other leading goal scorers from last season and simply had no replacements for them. None of the freshman forwards showed any real talent.
Realistically, if Randy was paying attention to his roster, he should have recruited the future replacements for West, et al., two seasons ago. But other than Abiodun, I didn’t see a talented freshman or sophomore on the pitch all season.
Female soccer players tend to commit early, so it is not going to be easy to fix what is wrong without hitting the transfer portal hard. That is something he hasn’t done in the past. But, it is happening a lot in the sport.
To compound the problem, the best 4 players on the team other than Abiodun — Schupansky, Coffield, Phiri and Melenhorst — all appear to be out of eligibility.
I think a major rebuild is going to be required, including the transfer portal and foreign recruiting, or this program will take another big step back next year. It took so long for them to escape being an ACC doormat and I know we don’t want to see that happen again.
The big difference between this year’s team and last year’s team, which made a deep run in the NCAA tournament before losing to eventual national champion FSU, was at forward. They lost Amanda West and two of the other leading goal scorers from last season and simply had no replacements for them. None of the freshman forwards showed any real talent.
Realistically, if Randy was paying attention to his roster, he should have recruited the future replacements for West, et al., two seasons ago. But other than Abiodun, I didn’t see a talented freshman or sophomore on the pitch all season.
Female soccer players tend to commit early, so it is not going to be easy to fix what is wrong without hitting the transfer portal hard. That is something he hasn’t done in the past. But, it is happening a lot in the sport.
To compound the problem, the best 4 players on the team other than Abiodun — Schupansky, Coffield, Phiri and Melenhorst — all appear to be out of eligibility.
I think a major rebuild is going to be required, including the transfer portal and foreign recruiting, or this program will take another big step back next year. It took so long for them to escape being an ACC doormat and I know we don’t want to see that happen again.
