The Idaho soccer team is ready to kick off its fall soccer season –– a season filled with high hopes and expectations for the program, with nine seniors on the roster ready to make a run for the Big Sky title.
With a new coaching staff taking over, Idaho has quality players that can easily adapt and have the chemistry to evolve.
Fans should keep an eye on senior forward Bridget Daley this season. Daley finished her first season with Idaho last season after transferring from Humboldt State, where she was the leading scorer for both of her seasons there.
Daley started in all 19 games this last season, netting six goals, four assists, and was named honorable mention for the All-Big Sky team.
The team was undefeated in games that Daley scored in last year. She scored three game-winning goals to add to her list of accomplishments. This season she will be an important piece of the Vandal’s offensive success, just as she was last season.
Idaho has an established defensive unit able to hold its own when healthy and organized, and it will be up to Daley to create plays from the forward position and score goals when Idaho has the advantage on change of possession plays.
The senior’s speed and footwork also gives her the ability to not only take on defenders in isolation scenarios, but also to make runs across the defense, receiving the ball in open space and getting quality opportunities to score. If Idaho has a high level of offensive efficiency and quality looks behind Daley this coming season, the sky is the limit for this group.
Heading into their opening matchup of the season, the Utah Utes provided a tough test for Idaho’s first game of the season.
Utah hails from the Pac-12 conference, which had four teams ranked in the Top 25 at the end of the 2017 season. Utah ended last season with a 5-11-3 record and looked to bounce back with the signing of an exciting new recruit.
Freshman Hailey Stodden was named the BoCoPreps and Front Range League Player of the Year last year and was also named to the US U-18 women’s national team, not an easy feat to accomplish. Stodden can play all over the field, giving opposing teams headaches all game long, and this will be the perfect way for the Vandals to start the year.
Playing against a team from a Power Five conference will be one of the toughest matchups of the year and should give Idaho a good metric to base on what needs to be focused on and improved before conference play begins later in the season.
But as with any team, responsibility to have the team prepared with a set game plan will fall upon the newly hired head coach Jeremy Clevenger.
Clevenger has had great success when coming to new teams and helping them find success early during his time there. Clevenger was a part of the University of Northern Iowa coaching staff for two seasons where he helped build a strong force in the Missouri Valley Conference, finishing with a 14-5-1 record and going to the MVC championship game. He was also the head coach at Western State College where he took the newly founded team to find wins against quality ranked Division II opponents.
With some of the best talent the Big Sky has to offer and after only losing one senior from last season, it will certainly be exciting to see how this season plays out for the Vandals.
Zack Kellogg can be reached at [email protected]