The UCLA women’s soccer team began this season exactly where it finished the last.
Back in North Carolina, the Bruins played their first game of the season on Aug. 22 against the top-ranked Tar Heels ““ and lost again.
This time, the score was more lopsided: a 7-2 thrashing handed out by North Carolina rather than the 1-0, evenly played match of last December.
But perhaps the subtle subtext of that result is that UCLA scored twice against the Tar Heels at their home field.
Since the Bruins tallied two against UNC, the Tar Heels haven’t given up another goal. Last year, UNC gave up two goals or more in only five games, and this version of North Carolina is widely considered to be better than last year’s national-championship squad.
While it may seem premature to dwell on the UCLA-UNC matchup, it becomes more pertinent when one considers the recent history of Bruin soccer.
UCLA has now been to a record six-straight College Cups and seven overall under coach Jillian Ellis without winning a single championship.
“Every single time it just feels like another stab in the heart,” senior forward Kristina Larsen said.
“It certainly doesn’t get any easier and I can’t say you get used to it even if it has been four times already,” redshirt senior forward Kara Lang said. “I don’t think there are very many teams out there who quite have the experience we have of having been to the Final Four, and I think we can use that to our advantage. But we need to find what the difference is.”
Lang, one of the team’s captains, clearly knows that at this point, it is about the subtle differences that might finally push this team over the top.
According to Larsen, reaching the College Cup isn’t really good enough anymore ““ the team wants a title.
And to get it, barring some unforeseen upset, UCLA will probably have to go through North Carolina, a team it is 0-7 against all-time.
So can they beat them?
The coach thinks so.
“The very purpose of why I wanted to play them early on in the season was to let the players have that experience,” Ellis said. “I think we will ““ and maybe they will too ““ be a different team by the end of the season. … I think this is a wake-up call for our mindset and what we need to do, and I think it kind of recommitted the players.
“It’s kind of why we play. I don’t sense a fear factor; it’s just we didn’t execute what we talked about in the first 10 minutes of the game. (North Carolina is) a team that is firing on all cylinders; they’re the team to beat, and yeah, I believe we can beat them.”
Several subtle differences exist between this year’s team and the last six.
Numerous players, along with Ellis, cited an eager and excited freshman class to go with more team depth than years past.
“I think this is probably one of the deepest benches we’ve had,” Lang said. “We’ve got talent across the board; we can make five or six subs in a game and not skip a beat. I think that’s going to be a huge advantage for us. We have a great group of freshmen and they are all super capable and locked in to what the team is about.”
The talent on this version of the team is especially evident in the Bruins’ firepower on the front line. UCLA lost an All-American in Tina DiMartino, but returns Olympic gold-medalist Lauren Cheney, Under-20 Women’s World Cup MVP Sydney Leroux, a Canadian Olympian in Lang, and Larsen, who provided the spark off the bench last year that UCLA needed to get to Carolina in the first place.
This year, the team is playing in a variety of different systems and formations, moving almost all the aforementioned players between the front line and the midfield.
Perhaps the area of the field most in question, then, is the defense, only because the unit was so stellar last season. It gave only six goals all of last season, leaving behind high expectations for this year’s group.
The unit lost All-American Erin Hardy but it returns senior captain Dea Cook, senior All-Pac-10 selection Lauren Wilmoth and junior defender Lauren Barnes, who started all but one game last season.
“There’s never going to be an Erin Hardy,” Wilmoth said. “She’s just an amazing player that can’t be matched. I feel like we have just as much experience as last year. … I feel like our defense is just as good.”
The unit will be protecting redshirt sophomore goalkeeper Chante’ Sandiford who transferred from Villanova last season. Ellis has been very impressed by Sandiford, who has given up only two goals in the five games she has started.
With so much star power starting, the team is indeed left with impact players who can come off the bench.
Ellis knows that staying fresh toward the end of the season will be critical to another deep post-season run.
“With the depth of this team, we will be able to rest players a little bit more in games,” she said. “Teams that do well in the postseason are usually the deeper teams because they don’t lose as much when you put a substitute in. I think that is a big piece of it. … I think this year I’m a little more committed to getting these players playing time a little earlier on.”
And as if the Bruins need more motivation, the six-time defending Pac-10 champions were picked to finish behind Stanford in the preseason coaches’ poll. The Cardinal also exited in the national semifinal last year.
“It just adds fuel to the fire,” Ellis said. “Stanford didn’t lose a whole lot as far as personnel so they are going to be a very deep team. Ourselves and ‘SC lost some pretty impactful players.”
But the Bruins still have their sights set on that elusive national championship. Regardless of how they get there, every player seems to agree on one thing: They don’t want that sick feeling that comes with losing in their stomachs ever again.
“It sucks every year after we lose, so I just can’t imagine the feeling after the last year,” Wilmoth said. “If I take the feeling I’ve had the last three years and times it by 10, then I just don’t want to feel it.”
“You don’t want to have that feeling that you’ve had for three years. Every year you feel like it’s going to be the year, but it’s a letdown. Now, coming into my final try, I need to go all out and everyone needs to go all out with me because we’ve got to make this happen,” Larsen said.