TUCSON, Ariz. – The 2017 regular season is officially here as the Arizona women's soccer team is set to face the 16th-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in Norman, Okla. On Friday, Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. MST. The game will be aired live on the Fox Sports Go app as well as Fox College Sports Atlantic.
2016 Recap
The Wildcats completed their 2016 campaign with a .500 record of 9-9-1 (4-7 Pac-12). This gave the team a seventh-place finish in the Pac-12 standings after capping off the season with a two-game winning streak against No. 18 California and Arizona State. The squad came very close to an NCAA Tournament berth this season, as the top six teams in the Pac-12 went on to postseason play. Arizona was ranked seventh. In addition, the team was defeated by a margin of only one goal in six matches, and converting a few of those games into ties or wins would have given them a shot at the tournament.
Weekend Recap
On Friday, the Wildcats controlled the game from the get go and defeated the Grand Canyon Lopes by a score of 3-0 in their first exhibition match of the season.
Charlotte Brascia,
Amanda Porter and
Cali Crisler scored Arizona's goals. On Sunday, Arizona defeated the UTEP Miners 2-1 in their second exhibition match. The goals were produced for the Wildcats by Porter and Crisler.
Kennedy Kieneker and Porter also each had an assist. The Wildcats dominated the game in the shots department as they outshot the Miners 19-3 and had eight shots on goal as opposed to UTEP's one shot on goal
One More Go Around for Gabi
Senior
Gabi Stoian is poised to finish her career as the most decorated player in Arizona history. The Scottsdale native started every game last season and earned 1,503 minutes of time over the course of the season. She scored six goals and tallied five assists for a total of 17 points. These stats pushed her to 25 goals in her career, 20 assists and 70 points. Stoian is second all-time in each of those categories and is in striking distance of breaking all three of those records in 2017.
Between the Posts
Lainey Burdett got the nod in 16 of Arizona's 19 matches last season after being sidelined the first three games due to an illness. She made incredible saves throughout the season, earning one of the top performances from a keeper that Arizona has ever seen. Burdett maintained a goals-against average of 1.16, the fifth-lowest mark by an Arizona goalkeeper. This was aided by the seven shutouts that she earned, a feat the placed her in a tie for third in season shutouts and propelled her to fourth all-time for career shutouts at 10. The junior is currently ninth all-time in Arizona history with 111 career saves.
The Fab Five
The Wildcats will feature five seniors this season (
Gabi Stoian,
Charlotte Brascia,
Cali Crisler,
Brandi Park and
Jackie Bollinger). Stoian, Brascia, Crisler and Bollinger are looking to be the first class in Arizona history to qualify for the NCAA Tournament (Park transferred from Pima Community College in 2016). Since 2014, that group's freshman season, the Wildcats have a record of 34-22-5, which is tied for the most wins in a three-year period in Arizona history.
Newcomers Galore
Head coach
Tony Amato brought on seven newcomers for the 2017 campaign. Those seven include
Amanda Porter,
Bryanna Duckett, Hannah and
Hailey Clifford,
Sabrina Enciso,
Jada Talley and
Taryn Siegele. Amato is not afraid to put freshmen on the pitch as last year's class of 11 combined to play in 90 games with three of them playing in at least 18 games. Porter scored a pair of goals last weekend while Enciso played all 90 minutes against UTEP.
#ExperienceIt
Attendance at Mulcahy Stadium has been steadily growing since Amato took over. In his four years as head coach, the Wildcats have an average attendance of 681 and in the four previous years before Amato was named head coach, the average attendance was 509. There have been nine instances when 1,000+ fans flocked to Mulcahy Stadium for a game and five of them have been during the
Tony Amato era. Additionally, four of the top five attendance figures have been during Amato's tenure, which includes when the attendance record was broken when 1,302 fans packed Mulcahy Stadium on Nov. 6, 2015 to see the Wildcats take on Arizona State.
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