The Arizona State women’s soccer team is currently in the midst of its spring season. The team started spring workouts in February and has also played a pair games, most recently against BYU on March 19. This weekend the team will travel to California for a pair of contests at the University of San Diego on Saturday (vs. Pepperdine at 3:30 p.m. and vs. San Diego at 6:30 p.m.).
The 2016 squad will have a much different look to it as the team graduated nine seniors from last year’s squad.
ASU head coach Kevin Boyd recently sat down to talk about the team’s game against BYU, what the team has been concentrating on in spring ball and also the team’s Alumni Game on April 23 (2 p.m.).
On performance against BYU:
“The great thing about playing BYU is that we have a really great game with them every year. They’re talented and they’re athletic and every year that we play them I think that they’re every bit as good in the spring as they are in the fall which is incredibly rare so we knew we were in for a good game.
“We played three 30-minute periods. The first thirty ended up in a 1-1 tie. I thought that if I were giving the edge to a team I would give it to them. I thought they had more chances than us. Lucy scored a tremendous goal, but we were a little bit disorganized in the back and in the middle.
“In the second period we made adjustments and I thought we played well. It ended up 0-0. I would give the edge to us in that we had more of the ball and more of the chances. In the third period, it ended up 2-1 making the overall game score 3-2. They scored the first one so we were actually down 2-1. We came back and got a goal on a PK and then we got another one on their end. (Jazmarie Mader) got a little chance at a slip ball in for a breakaway and the keeper got a hand on it and blocked it but it rolled to the end, in towards the goal. Lucy tried to follow it up but she had a defender on her, who kind of slid and blocked it wide, went back out to Jaz who chipped it to the back post and Aly Moon did a diving header to put it in the goal. Because we were in their end more often I gave us the edge in the third period as well.
“I thought out midfield had a great game. Lucy, Aly, Adriana, Maddie Kmetko, I thought all had really good games. Those four in particular stand out to me in that they were impactful in the way that we were playing. It’s exciting that Kmetko and Adrianna are among the names that I mentioned because typically Aly’s and Lucy’s names have been there so we get to add those two and that’s really exciting.”
Points of emphasis in spring:
“We are trying to bring out the traits that this particular group has, our strongest traits. I think this group is a roll-up-your-sleeves and get-at-it-group and I like that a lot. They work hard and are gritty and positive at the same time. They just have a good energy about them and a good spirit about them. Our focus has been trying to utilize that and let them run. We graduated a lot of experience and so we’ve just been trying to train players on tactical understanding in their positions. Both from a positional shape sense and also decision making on and off the ball. We spend a lot of time on that. That’s what we’ll keep doing.”
On the goalkeepers:
“Pretty good battle going on in the goal right now. All three keepers bring something different and so it’s a wide-open race. It’s really on them to put themselves in the top spot heading towards the fall and in the fall the race begins again. This is a good time for them to position themselves and earn themselves some credit that can go into the bank in terms of knowing what they can bring to us.”
On the alumni game coming up on April 23:
“I love seeing the alumni come back. I like hearing their stories and what they’re doing now. We are very much trying to keep them in touch with our program and keep them informed on what we are doing.”