UNM Women’s Soccer
Season-ending player accolades
MW All-Tournament Team: Senior defender Alexis Leyba; junior forward Lindsey Guice
All-Mountain West Second-Team: Junior forward Dylann O’Connor, junior goalkeeper Cassie Ulrich, redshirt freshman defender Emily Chavez
Capital One CoSIDA Academic Second-Team All-Region: Dylann O’Connor, Cassie Ulrich
MW Player of the Week Honors: Dylann O’Connor (Offense, Nov. 3); Emily Chavez (Offense, Oct. 13); Cassie Ulrich (Defense, Oct. 13); Ruth Bruciaga (Offense, Sept. 26)
By Greg Archuleta
UNM Assistant Director of Communication
The end of the University of New Mexico women’s soccer team’s 2014 season was like television series season-ending cliff-hanger.
Oh, the possibilities for 2015!
The next head coach for the Lobos, which will be just the fourth coach in program history, could inherit a team that is in position to compete for a Mountain West championship next season.
The Lobos entered 2014 armed with just one senior, defending midfielder Alexis Leyba. They weren’t able to settle on a starting lineup until the 10th game of the season – ironically on Oct. 10 (10/10) at UNLV – which was the midpoint of UNM’s season.
The Lobos started the season with a 3-4-2 record through the first nine games, using the same starting lineup only twice. UNM finished the season 7-2 after securing a starting lineup.
The only drawback to the night-and-day halves to the season was that it left the Lobos as the No. 3 seed in the Mountain West Tournament – rather than the No. 2 seed, which secured a first-round bye. And that was the difference in UNM’s 2-1 overtime loss to second-seeded Wyoming in the Mountain West tournament semifinals in San Diego.
UNM finished the season with emotional wins over the conference’s top two teams, Wyoming and San Diego State, and then took out the league’s hottest team in the first game of the conference tournament in the Boise State Broncos.
In the MW semifinal, The Lobos took a 1-0 lead into the second half but ran out of steam against the fresh-legged Cowgirls and were unable to finish.
The premature end doesn’t diminish the tremendous efforts of the team. UNM went 4-0-1 away from the UNM Soccer Complex in 2014, marking the first time in conference history that a Lobo team went unbeaten on the road (excluding neutral games) during a season.
The leadership that Leyba and the junior class – forwards Dylann O’Connor, Lindsey Guice and Madisyn Olguin, midfielder Alyssa Coonrod, defender Olivia Ferrier and goalkeeper Cassie Ulrich – provided in getting the team in a position to contend for the conference crown grew as the season went along.
Leyba and Guice were named to the Mountain West All-Tournament team. O’Connor, the team’s leading scorer, and Ulrich were second-team All-MW selections
Olguin had a goal and an assist in the conference tournament. She sustained a gash over her eye in the season-finale against SDSU but continued to battle in the tournament. Ferrier, who helped mentor redshirt freshman Emily Chavez, helped anchor the defense that gave up just seven goals in the last eight games.
Ulrich had a stretch of 416 minutes, 40 seconds in which she did not allow a goal. Ironically, that streak started in San Jose, Calif., when she played the first 72 minutes without allowing a goal. The Lobos led 1-0 when the goalkeeper got tangled with a Spartans player for a free kick in the air; Ulrich grabbed the ball away from the Spartan, but then she toppled over the player and couldn’t brace her fall because she still was holding onto the ball.
Ulrich hit the ground and suffered a concussion. Redshirt freshman Laura DeMers played admirably as Ulrich’s fill-in, but the Spartans scored the equalizer.
Instead of the Lobos earning three points for the victory, they had to settle for one point and the draw. The two-point difference was enough to keep them out of second place in the regular-season race. A UNM win in San Jose would have given the Lobos an 8-2-1 conference mark for 25 points (instead of 7-2-2 for 23 points). Wyoming finished 8-3 for 24 points.
Without Ulrich for the next two games, the Lobos could manage only a tie with Air Force (1-1) and lost to Colorado College 2-0.
When Ulrich returned, UNM reeled off three consecutive 1-0 shutouts.
But as strong as the defense looked at times with Ulrich in net, it was the offense that showed the bigger improvement from last season. The team scored 25 goals in 18 games after scoring 20 goals in 21 games in 2013.
UNM had eight multiple-goal scorers, led by true freshman Claire Lynch with four. O’Connor had three goals and led the team with 10 points. Guice, who scored two goals in the conference tournament, finished the season with three goals.
“Potential” should be a buzzword for the team in 2015 with so much experience returning.
Four true freshman played considerable minutes for UNM in Lynch, Casey Murphy, Alexa Cabrales and Ashley Ballantyne. Three redshirt freshman also contributed heavily to the Lobos’ minutes. Chavez led the team in minutes played. DeMers and midfielder Quincy Slora also had key roles in the season’s fortunes.
It’s a team with a lot of promise with which the incoming coach can mold into an instant contender.
Stay tuned. The Lobos intend on following through their cliff-hanger with a better 2015.