ASU soccer team faced enormous obstacles

Haunted by injuries, their own youth and a grueling Pac-10 schedule, the ASU women’s soccer team fell one win shy of reaching the NCAA tournament.

“We’re remarkable, but not special,” said head coach Kevin Boyd.

The Sun Devils finished with an 8-8-4 record.

With two weeks left in the season Boyd told his team, “that the fact that they put themselves in a spot to go .500 is absolutely remarkable with what they faced this year.”

“We knew coming in, that this would be our most challenging year,” Boyd said. “It proved to be fact.”

The team began the season with 21 members on its roster. That was five players short of the 26 Boyd and his staff wanted.

The team also faced some recruiting issues and inexperience.

“Not only did we have all of those things but we also had Murphy’s Law kick in,” Boyd said.

Six players went down with season-ending injuries.

At one point in the season, the team went on a road trip with only 13 field players on the roster.

“If you look at our injury report,” Boyd said, “it looks like a triage unit.”

Goalkeeper Briana Silvestri did not train all year due to a dislocated shoulder, but managed to play in 16 games.

In a mid-October match against seventh-ranked USC, Silvestri dislocated her shoulder again but popped it in before the trainer could look at it so that she could finish the game.

The Sun Devils beat the Trojans that day, giving them their first victory over a top-10 team since they beat Stanford in 2001.

Injuries forced freshmen Katie Shepard and Kate Sangster to play out of position at defense all year.

Sangster battled a nagging hamstring injury of her own that minimized her level of training all year. A thin roster, however, kept her on the field every game.

“That’s the way every week went for her,” Boyd said. “We’d improve the hamstring then she’d re-pull it on the weekend.”

The team faced other challenges. The Pac-10 sent six teams, including No. 1 UCLA and No. 3 Stanford, to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s a dogfight,” Boyd said. “If you come out .500, you’ve done quite well.”

The Sun Devils finished 2-6-1 against conference opponents.

“To be special, truly special,” Boyd said the team needed to get just one last victory to make the NCAA tournament.

The Sun Devils fell just short.

Two overtime losses to end the season prevented them from entering the postseason.

Against Washington the referee awarded the Huskies a penalty kick on a questionable call according to Boyd, on which they scored to end the game.

At Washington State, fog so dense that the opposing goalkeepers could not see each other engulfed the playing field. In the second overtime, the Sun Devils conceded a goal and watched the prospects of a postseason vanish into the heavy air.

Arizona State went 0-3-4 in overtime this season.

“We didn’t find a way to fit balls in the net in overtime,” Boyd said. “To be honest, we struggled scoring all year… We just don’t have the depth up top yet to get it done. It’s something we have to continue to develop.”

Still, Boyd was optimistic.

“If you evaluated us on paper, we had no business being in some of the games we were in,” he said.

Despite the thin roster and injuries, the Sun Devils beat and tied ranked opponents such as Texas, USC, UC Santa Barbara, and Long Beach State this season.

“Resilience,” Boyd said, “is the word I’ve been using all year long for them. I think that’s a great description of this year’s team.”