Ohio’s season ended Sunday in a campaign filled with hope and uncertainty. Ohio coach Stacy Strauss emphasized before the season that this year was going to different with fresh faces and a fresh start with a new attitude coming into the year.
In the non-conference schedule, it appeared that the Bobcats heeded her advice, winning six straight matches and outshooting their opponents 95-55 during that stretch. Ohio senior defender Paige Howard said the six-game winning streak was big for the team making things exciting, but the team generally was not consistent enough when it had to be.
“I think it helped us tremendously, but we never put teams all the way away,” Howard said. “We never scored as many goals as we wanted…. There’s a lot of things we needed to fix, but I don’t think we made it as big a priority as we thought it should be or needed to be.”
After graduating 10 seniors from the previous squad, the Bobcats were left with four seniors on the roster and significant playing time for underclassmen.
Freshmen Holly Harris and Grace Campbell received significant minutes. Also, sophomore midfielder Erin Feeney and sophomore defender Gabby Hausfeld stepped up as starters on both sides of the ball this year.
One uncertainty for Ohio entering the season was its defense, but the fear was quickly put to ease. Howard, along with Hausfeld and Campbell, anchored the back line for Ohio.
Junior keeper Mattie Liston cemented her name in the Ohio soccer history books Sunday when she passed Vanessa Dennis to become the all-time saves leader. Liston made 112 saves this year for the Bobcats.
Senior Cat Rogers said the defense played fantastic this year.
“In the four years that I’ve been here, we haven’t been a team that scored a lot of goals,” Rogers said. “So our defenses have had to be good, and they have been good the past four years, and I think this year they were not short of that. They played unreal.”
The Bobcats’ offense was also a question mark entering the season, with the team changing its offensive scheme. Rogers led Ohio with seven goals and provided a boost when an often-dormant Bobcats’ offense struggled to generate shots.
Transfers, junior Maggie Murnane and sophomore Tonya Frasik provided a spark to the team on the offensive side of the ball. Murnane finished the season as the top-three goal scorer on the squad. Frasik, who is known for her energy, often came off the bench and helped the Bobcat offense with her physical play and abundance of energy on the pitch.
Rogers said it was sometimes tough on the offense in the season, because the offense was not generating the shots they wanted and the defense was playing well.
“It’s more like we take three steps forward and then one step back,” Rogers said. “We found strides, we built on those, and then we just hit a setback. We had bits and pieces here and there, but never the full thing at any one time which is unfortunate, because we had boatloads of potential, we just never achieved it.”
Even though the Bobcats did not win as much as they would have liked, some aspects beyond their control hurt the team. Liston said this year was the unluckiest year as a keeper because of the breaks the team suffered, whether it was questionable calls or bad bounces into the net.
Liston said it is hard to say how the team will be next year because it is a long way away, but it has the pieces in place to be successful.
“I definitely see good things in the future. We have a lot of strong talent,” Liston said. “We have a lot of young talent, so if we can kind of harness that and use it in a positive matter, I think we’ll be able to put some good stuff together.”
mk277809@ohiou.edu
