Women's soccer should remain atop Ivy League

Women's soccer coach Julie Shackford has the sort of problem that most coaches would love to have.

This year's team "is more talented than last year's," she said, "but because of our level of depth, our biggest challenge is finding the right people at the right times and getting the right chemistry on the field."

With eight returning starters from last year's 14-3-2 Ivy champion team, and one of the nation's top recruiting classes, the Tigers are gunning for a third-straight Ivy title and a fourth-straight NCAA tournament bid — which would be a program first.

Their main objectives this year include winning the Ivy League outright, as opposed to sharing the title like they did last year with Penn and Dartmouth, and making at least the final sixteen — the third round — in the national tournament. Last year they lost to Rutgers in the second round.

The Tigers jumped from being unranked in the NSCAA preseason poll to No. 21 and No. 3 in the Mid-Atlantic region in the Sept. 9 poll, and got off to a good start in last Saturday's season opener with a 2-1 win at Seton Hall.

But the first real test of the season will come tomorrow when the Tigers head to New Haven to take on Yale.

"That's the first big hurdle," Shackford said. "In soccer, each [Ivy] game is like a championship because there isn't a tournament at the end. You get to play each team once. Also, we're looking to avenge our loss — Yale was our only loss in the league last year."

Princeton will be led this year by three senior captains: defenders Heather Deerin and Kelly Sosa, and midfielder Joan Cundey. Deerin, last year's Ivy League Player of the Year, is a key component of the Tigers' airtight defense that only allowed nine goals last season and finished with nine shutouts.

Sosa, a three time All-Ivy selection, is returning for her senior year after taking last year off from school after a preseason ACL injury, and her return can only increase the Tigers' defensive dominance.

In addition to its captains the team has three other seniors — including first-team All-Ivy forward Krista Ariss, who scored the gamewinner in the Seton Hall game — and five juniors, including midfielder Theresa Sherry, who has led the team in scoring for the past two years.

But like last year's team, this year's Tigers are overwhelmingly young.

Last season, as freshmen, the class of 2005 made a substantial mark on the program. Now, as sophomores with a year of play under their belts, expectations will be even higher for them to perform.

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Forward Esmeralda Negron, who scored the Tigers' first goal of the season against Seton Hall, led the team in game-winning goals last season, five, as well as shots, 48. Moreover, Negron and classmate Kristina Fontanez both tied with Krista Ariss for scoring the second-most goals last season with six.

Other key sophomores include midfielder Janine Willis, who plays on the Canadian national team; her twin sister, second-team All-Ivy defender Rochelle Willis; and midfielder Sylvia Morelli.

This year's incoming freshmen are poised to make a similar impact. They were ranked as the 16th-best recruiting class in the nation by SoccerBuzz magazine, and Shackford estimates that six of the seven will make immediate contributions.

Emily Behncke — whose older brother Matt Behncke '02 was on the men's team and drafted by the Dallas Burn in February, and whose other brother Griff Behncke '00 also played at Princeton — will probably start somewhere in the midfield, and Maura Gallagher "will either start or come right off the bench off top," Shackford said. Maija Garnaas and Romy Trigg-Smith are also likely to get some time early on, Garnaas at midfield and Trigg-Smith either at midfield or back.

Although the team did not suffer any critical losses to graduation, there is a hole to fill in goal due to the departure of Catherine Glenn '02. Freshmen Madeleine Jackson and Emily Vogelzang are expected to compete with junior Jean Poster for time.

"We have really good depth; the biggest challenge will be trying to utilize that depth in a way that brings us results," Shackford said. "It's a good coaching problem, and it will be interesting to see how long it takes."