Every team has goals of making the postseason.
When they don’t advance, the season is considered a disappointment.
The ASU soccer team (8-11, 4-7 Pac-12) qualified for the NCAA tournament in the past two seasons and entered this season hoping to advance for a school-record third consecutive time.
However, the team was decimated from injuries all season long, one reason why ASU’s season ended earlier than they anticipated.
“The primary culprit was injuries and we all know that,” coach Kevin Boyd said. “When we started getting people healthy, we started playing well again.”
The main position that suffered blow after blow was forward.
Freshman forward Alexandra Doller missed 11 of the team’s 19 games with an ACL tear. Before the injury, Doller was the team’s leading scorer with five goals in seven games.
Sophomore forward Devin Marshall, a prime candidate to have a break out year next season, missed seven games in the middle of the season with an ankle injury.
Redshirt junior forward Courtney Tinnin missed the first eight games with a torn meniscus in her knee. That injury came after recovering from an ACL tear in the offseason.
Redshirt sophomore Nicki Stone missed eight games with a torn meniscus as well, and was banged up in the rest of the season.
In addition to all the injuries in the frontline, sophomore defender Kaityln Pavlovich missed the season’s final 12 games with a back injury.
Sophomore goalie Vittoria Arnold, who competed with junior goalie Alyssa Gillmore for playing time, missed the team’s final 16 games after being struck in the face trying to pick up a shot.
“When you got six starters off the field all at once for about a month — that hurts,” Boyd said. When you get a couple of them back — which we did, they’re not back 100 percent. And your team’s mentality is a little down because they’ve beaten up during that period.”
There were two stretches where the season got away from the Sun Devils control.
In one period ASU lost four of five games, including three decided by one goal.
The close games are ones winning teams can ill-afford to lose. The level of competition between teams in the Pac-12 is roughly the same other than the top two teams.
Later in the season, ASU suffered a four-game losing skid that included two overtime losses.
Those losses to USC (7-13, 4-7) and Washington State (12-6-3, 6-3-2) were the one that will sting throughout the offseason.
Against USC, the Sun Devils forced overtime with a goal in the final minute of regulation. But ASU couldn’t capitalize on their momentum in the overtime period and gave up a goal to lose the game just three minutes into the extra period.
Against Washington State, ASU scored in the second overtime, only to have the goal called back. The Cougars scored just a minute after the goal was called back and won the game with a couple minutes remaining in the final overtime.
One of the lone bright spots for ASU was the emergence of senior forward Sierra Cook, who started because of all the injuries occurring in the frontline.
Cook led the team with eight goals and 16 total points, and scored five goals in her last six games.
She scored the game-winning goals in wins over rival UA (1-16-2, 1-9-1) and in the win over Washington (7-8-5, 3-5-3) on Senior Night.
Those two games were the highpoint of the season for ASU, a season that they hoped would turn out better.
Reach the reporter at justin.janssen@asu.edu
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