This is the last installment of White & Blue Review’s preview of the 2010 Creighton women’s soccer team. Join us every day this week as we take a look at a different part of Bruce Erickson’s club, leading up to his team’s regular season opener Friday, August 20, against South Dakota State.
Alicia Montgomery and Katie Jo Swanson, Creighton’s goalkeepers, have a tough audience. Head coach Bruce Erickson was a four-year starter in goal for Viterbo, where he earned all-conference honors and NLCAA All-America recognition in 1986. Assistant coach Ileana Moschos was a goalkeeper for the Greece women’s national team when the squad hosted the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics and has worked with keepers at various collegiate stops before Creighton, turning them into all-conference performers.
So when Erickson says that Montgomery and Swanson are the best in the Missouri Valley Conference, you have to figure that the two have improved on their record-setting performances from 2009 and shown the coaching staff a move to the next level.
The two keepers combined to allow only 0.60 goals against per match in 2009, good for a school record and the 13th best average in the NCAA. As a sophomore, Montgomery started 18 matches and allowed just 0.58 GAA (the third-best single-season output in school history). She logged 8 shutouts (second-best single-season mark at CU) and posted an overall record in goal of 12-5-1. Her 12 wins were 2 shy of the single-season school record for goalkeeping victories. These efforts helped Montgomery earn second team All-MVC accolades in 2009.
Swanson, a sophomore, earned 3 starts in her freshman campaign and saw action in 6 games total. She recorded a shutout in her first career start, and the Bluejays went 1-1-1 in the games she started. Swanson played less than one-third of the minutes in goal Montgomery logged, but she still posted a 0.67 GAA, good for the fourth-best single-season effort in Creighton history.
Katie Jo Swanson makes a stop in goal