The St. Bonaventure women’s soccer team’s season came to a close over the weekend at Saint Joseph’s University with a 2-1 loss.
The team missed the Atlantic 10 playoffs for the third consecutive year. It also left Bonaventure at 1-8 in conference and 4-14-1 overall.
Head Coach Steve Brdarski said the main positive to take away from 2016 is that the team learned to play the game together.
“I’ll let you know in a year how well it went,” said Brdarski. “With so many young players who got into games, played roles, got minutes, we’re hoping that that experience is going to help them next fall, along with what happens this spring.”
Freshman Sydney Cerza, who scored three goals this season, said that while the team wishes it could have gotten some points out of a few of its close games, overall the team did well.
“We had our ups and downs this season, but I think as a whole throughout the season we really improved,” said Cerza. “We ended up learning a lot.”
Cerza said that missing out on the Atlantic 10 tournament is a disappointment, but the youth on the team will make it prepared for next season.
“It was really tough for us, but I think we learned a lot,” said Cerza, “But having so many freshman who didn’t really know what it was like going in, I think we are going to be ready for next year.”
Brdarski said one of the positives he has taken from this season, especially the last few games, is that the team stayed competitive.
“The biggest thing from a coaching perspective, when things aren’t going well and you’re losing games, the immediate emotion is to drop your head, give up and stop fighting,” said Brdarski. “I think the greatest thing from this group was that we never did that. We came every game, and we didn’t look at our records or our results. We never folded up, we never gave up and we never gave the excuse. We came every game and we fought hard.”
Another positive was the 6-0 game against Youngstown State, Brdarski said, because it showed that the team is capable of winning and scoring goals.
“Looking back on it now, we sort of wish we could have saved three or four of those goals for a couple other games,” said Brdarksi. “That game was a game that showed us what we could have done. In the game against Davidson, too, we had a game plan, we fought and we played with grit.”
The team is only losing two seniors, defenders Mirae Whitaker and Jennifer Morris, but Brdarski said it isn’t so much replacing the player as it is what they bring to the locker room.
“They step up, those are the type of players they are. They’re going to do whatever the team needs, they’ve done that for four years,” said Brdarski. “So I think it’s more of replacing the person, replacing the teammate and those two things, I’m not sure that we can replace those things.”
Cerza said since the team is remaining mostly the same next season, they only need to improve some minor areas of their game in order to show improvement.
“For the upcoming season, we really just need to work on our foot-skills and getting stronger and faster,” said Cerza. “We need to be focused and get a lot of work done on and off the field. We need to work on keeping possession and not giving away so many balls.”
signorra15@bonaventure.edu
