2006 Women's Soccer Review

A look back at this year's Red Hawks

- (11/2/2006)

    It wasn't quite the season that Head Coach Mark Starr had envisioned. 

    With his first recruiting class as head coach in, expectation's were set higher than normal.  Looking back on a 3-13-1 (1-4-1 Cal Pac) season, it is easy to see that building a program will take some time.  After all, the women's soccer program has yet to post a winning record.  Despite a 5-8 record in his first season, Coach Starr realizes that with an upgraded schedule, the wins will take time.

    It did not help either, that Starr's squad was banged up all year.  Key players were constantly playing with injuries and in pain.   This list of injuries is mind-boggling: multiple concussions, broken arm, separated shoulder, broken toe, pulled quad, sprained ankles, bone bruises, and bloody noses.

    But the Lady Red Hawks hardly gave up.  They just lacked the health and firepower to out play most of their opponents.  For instance, Simpson hosted Embry Riddle of Arizona in their season finale.  Earlier in the season, Embry Riddle knocked off  undefeated California Pacific Conference champion Holy Names University.  To say that the Lady Red Hawks were underdogs was an understatement.  After giving up an early goal, Simpson held tough in the second half.   They not only held Embry Riddle scoreless in the second half, but they nearly tied up the match with two solid opportunities.  Although Simpson lost 1-0, the Lady Red Hawks displayed what they had all season: heart.

     Much of that heart was exemplified in the example of their seniors Julie Swinburne, Jamie Van Schooten, and Amilia Blackwell.  The three team leaders have seen it all at Simpson and used those experiences in holding the Lady Red Hawks together, sometimes just by a bandage.

    As Coach Starr recruits his next class and moves the program in a positive direction, it is because of these hard-working individuals and others like them that Simpson University women’s soccer has a bright future.

   In that same Embry Riddle match, Blackwell played until she couldn’t stand the pain of her separated shoulder.  Van Schooten, still not at full strength from a 2005 ACL tear, continually tracked Embry Riddle strikers and kept them at bay.  A career midfielder and striker, Swinburne has spent the 2006 season shoring up the Red Hawk defense.  She moved back up to striker for her final career game and nearly netted the game-tying goal.

    If the future players of the women's soccer program want to be successful, they will use the example of those that came before them of what it takes to have heart.