After running his new team through a grueling morning session of conditioning and drills, first-year Creighton women’s soccer head coach Ross Paule returned to Morrison Stadium early in the afternoon to help two young players develop their skills prior to the second practice of the day that would take place in a few hours. He put the two players through a short distance passing drill, focusing on their accuracy, then later had them navigate through two cones set about two feet apart and fire shots into the far corner of the goal from just outside the 18-yard box.
“They called me,” Paule said. “I told them it’s kind of busy on the first day, but they wanted to be trained and I said ‘ok.’ I try to make time for that and anytime they ask I can’t turn down someone who wants extra work.”
The players who wanted extra training on this day were his teenage daughters, Jorden and Emma, who will be underclasswomen at Marian High School in the fall.
Once the session with his daughters concluded it was time for the second leg of the first day of preseason preparation. Paule and his coaching staff set up cones while his players ran onto the pitch and began to stretch and warm up. Paule told gathered his team made up of 23 players — 11 of whom have not played in more than five matches at the Division 1 level — and told them what they were about to go through would not be easy, but it would be necessary to get where they want the program to be. He promised them they would get their rest periods, but he asked for maximum effort in between those breaks.
“The first day is always a whole lot of excitement, a whole lot of nervousness from the players,” Paule said. “It’s a great day to evaluate how players handle that type of pressure, what type of fitness they’re in, how their touch looks, and how they’re blending as a team together.”
Drill on one side of the field, sprint down to the other. Drill on that side of the field, sprint back down to the other. Rinse. Repeat. With three weeks to prepare for the beginning for their 2015 regular season and home opener against South Dakota, the Bluejays didn’t spend any time sharing summer vacation memories. If some players let either let their fitness drop off in the offseason, or, in the case of the newcomers who don’t have a good idea of what it’s going to take to succeed in a Big East Conference that has sent six teams to the NCAA Tournament in the last two seasons, they were going to find out shortly.
Paule, a Hall of Fame midfielder for Creighton men’s soccer team back in the mid-90s, wasn’t focused on who fell into those groups, but rather how they would fight through it, and if they would do so as a unit.
“The most positive thing for me was that there are fitter players than others, and we worked really hard,” Paule said. “What I wanted to see was them push each other through it. For the ones that were more fit to push the ones that were not as fit, and I didn’t want to see anyone drop off just because of fitness, and I didn’t see that.
“It was really good to see that mentality, because that’s going to be the culture of this team. We’re going to have a team that is going to work really hard and we’re going to do a lot of good things together. It’s not going to happen individually.”
Though most of the team has little to no college experience, Creighton does return a solid core of their production from last year’s team that finished 10-6-2 mark overall. All-Big East performer and leading goal scorer Lauren Sullivan is back in Omaha for her junior season. Joining her in the attack are seniors Kirstyn Corder, Alyssa Jara, and Alissa Kohmetscher. Sullivan, Corder, and Jara scored 18 of the team’s 34 goals last season, while Kohmetscher has caused opposing teams fits with her ball skills and ability to create scoring chances for her teammates. Also returning with that group is former center back in junior Emily Roll, who has been patrolling the midfield for Ross Paule in the spring and fall, as well as being a vocal presence in practice and games.
By all early indications, this group returned to campus with the intention of being the examples of how things need to be done at Creighton.
“We do have a very good core group that have come back fit and ready,” Paule said of his key returnees. “To have people who will lead by example is huge. I think it goes a very long way, because now they can speak up. I look for all of them to find a way to lead, whether it’s by example or just by their voice, and making sure they’re doing everything it takes on and off the field to let the younger ones know this is what it takes to be an elite player and an elite team.”
The transformation into an elite program will take a lot longer than the three weeks Creighton has to prepare for the regular season, so for now Paule and the coaches just want to see them become a more organized unit and learn how they are supposed to play when they take the pitch for actual games.
“I think it’s going to take the whole team being on the same page,” Paule said. “Understanding the formation that we are playing, and understanding that they have to move as a unit and not work individually. We have midfielders, we have defenders, we have forwards, and we need to make sure they are working together and moving together. It’s a huge field that we have [at Morrison Stadium], and we need to make sure that we are moving as a unit from one side to the other, up and back.”
Creighton plays seven of their first 10 regular-season contests at Morrison Stadium beginning with their opener on August 21 at 7:00 p.m. against South Dakota. The Bluejays beat the Coyotes, 3-1, on the road last season, but South Dakota returned the favor with a 1-0 win in Omaha in the spring.
White Doubles Up Blue In Preseason Scrimmage
A scoreless first half quickly turned into a forgotten memory as fatigue set in, leading to an offensive explosion in the final 40 minutes as White defeated Blue, 6-3, in the annual intra-squad scrimmage on Saturday afternoon at Morrison Stadium.
Freshman forward Kaira Houser had an impressive debut, centering a ball to sophomore midfielder Darby Hugunin for the first goal of the match, then later scoring the game-winner in the 75th minute for the White team.
Aside from Houser, the day was led by that aforementioned core group of Kirstyn Corder, Lauren Sullivan, Alyssa Jara, and Emily Roll. Corder scored two goals on the afternoon, one for each time. Sullivan joined her with two scores, including a beautiful play where she split two defenders like an NBA point guard, then sent a sliding shot across the pitch and inside the far post for her second goal of the match. Jara and Roll added late goals to cap off the match and the first week of preseason.