The Arizona State women's soccer team is coming down the home stretch of its spring season. Last Saturday the team hosted a special 7 v 7 tournament at Sun Devil Soccer Stadium that included eight other college teams from around the state: Arizona Christian, Arizona Western College, Chandler-Gilbert CC, Embry-Riddle, Gateway CC, Glendale CC, Paradise Valley CC and Phoenix College.
The tournament was an all-day event as each team played at least five games (two 15-minute halves). The Sun Devil Soccer Stadium field was divided into two sections to allow for two games to be contested at the same time with each team utilizing six field players and a goalkeeper. ASU head coach Kevin Boyd used to run a similar tournament when he was the head coach at Cal and he said it was something he wanted to do at ASU but hadn't been able to because of the difficulty of finding 11 other teams in the area.
"Hosting a 12-team tournament did not seem like an option because of there not being enough schools in the area," Boyd said. "I reached out to some junior colleges to see if they'd be interested in playing in it and see if we could solve the problem (of finding enough teams) and they jumped at it."
To fill out the remainder of the bracket ASU, Embry-Riddle and Arizona Christian all split their squads into two separate teams. At the end of the day the schools combined to play 33 games, including two semifinal contests and a championship game. Boyd said he got great feedback on the event and that it is definitely something that program plans to do on an annual basis.
"I have a feeling based on the success of it and how well it was received that we will grow in terms other schools wanting to participate," Boyd said. "More of the four-year institutions will hear about it and want to do it. I think it's a start of something that will be really fun."
Boyd said he was really pleased with the performances of both Sun Devil squads. 'ASU Maroon' and 'ASU Gold' won all their games in each of their respective groups and ended up meeting in the championship game.
"I'm proud of the way our team handled it," Boyd said. "We showed up and played every game, and that may seem like a crazy statement, but when you play five games like that sometimes there can be some lulls and we didn't have that at all. I love that some of the games we won convincingly and that we played with the same intensity in every minute of every game. The teams were exhausted by the time they got to the semifinals, but both won, 4-0 and 5-0."
Boyd said he was worried that both ASU squads might let up a little bit in the final game, but that it ended up being quite the opposite.
"I was afraid they were tired, but that wasn't the case," Boyd explained. "I talked to them right before they played and said, 'This is part of what we're building, there's going to be a point next season where we're in our conference, we're going to be on the road Sunday in overtime and this is it. Use it like that. Can we find our focus and can we play fully, the way that we're expected to play even though it's the seventh game of the day and we're limited with help on the bench.' I thought the game was great. It ended 4-3, and ASU Maroon team ended up winning the tournament and got bragging rights over ASU Gold.
"The game had a little more of an edge to it. There was some talk going on between the two teams, so they were getting after it. There should be a little tension out there. If there isn't, it's not real. I'm really proud of the players for how they all went after it."
Freshman Natalie Stephens earned the Golden Boot award for the day as she found the back of the net 21 times. Also posting double-digit goal totals for the day were senior Lucy Lara (14) and sophomore Madison Kmetko (13). On the defensive end, both ASU squads gave up only a single goal during group play.
"I thought we did really well," Boyd said. "The caliber of opponent wasn't as high as we were accustomed to but I actually think that made us have to perform in every game. We absolutely did not want our level lowered at all. We wanted the opposite, and make opponents raise their level to us. I'm guessing that when the other teams played us that they knew that was the challenge of the day for them and that they were going to go full out, which is great."
The Sun Devils are now down to their final three games of the spring season. This weekend they will travel to El Paso for games vs. UTEP and New Mexico State on Saturday and then next Saturday the spring season will conclude with the annual ASU Alumni Game at 2 p.m. at Sun Devil Soccer Stadium. For this weekend's contests Boyd said he'd like to see the team continue to build on what it did last week, only now doing it within the more traditional game format.
"I want us to continue playing with the intensity we're playing with now," Boyd said. "I'd like to see some players step up and be a little more impactful. Let's see what we can do with (11 v 11). I'd like to see the aggressiveness with the attack similar to what we saw last weekend."