2011 Montana soccer: An anti preview
8/2/2011 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Aug. 2, 2011
This is an anti-preview. What started out as a season outlook quickly became a futile attempt at bringing some type of order to that which is open-ended.
It is early August, and nothing is known about the Griz soccer team, other than that they start practicing Wednesday. The roster is available, as is the schedule.
How the 29-player team evolves into a starting 11, with a pecking order of reserves, will be played out before our eyes in the coming weeks. Maybe longer.
There is one healthy senior on the team. Some starters return, but who knows if they will be starting again this fall.
A grand total of six returning players have scored a grand total of eight (eight!) aggregate goals in their collegiate careers - five of them just a single goal, with one coming from a player who has not played a minute since the 2008 (2008! Welcome back Ciara Kremer!) season.
Eight newcomers join the team, and all eight of them may lead the team in scoring, or they may not play significant minutes.
No one knows, because first-year coach Mark Plakorus enters the season with an egalitarian approach to his team.
He has 29 players, and each player has nothing on the other players, at least up until Wednesday, when 81,000 square feet of turf and a ball 28 inches in circumference and weighing 16 ounces separates everyone in the most brutally honest way possible.
Resumes, past minutes played, year in school, none of it matters. It's like Plakorus is channeling his inner John Lennon. Imagine there's no freshmen ... It's easy if you try ... No returning starters ... I'll play the best, oh my.
All is new when there is a first-year coach. Up is down, down is up, and there is no allegiance to the beauty of a Lauren Costa defensive play or a heart-pounding run up the field by India Watne. Everyone starts from square one.
If this concerns you, it shouldn't. This is all you need to know to make you feel better about the openness and randomness of it all:
Ask Plakorus if he is confident in his coaching and his ability to create a winning program at Montana, and he answers directly and forcefully before the entire question is even out of your mouth. Do you have any doubts about turn ... None! Next question.
Almost like you've touched a nerve by even suggesting such a thing. And that's why he's here, and not one of the other scores of coaches who longed to be taking this team into its first practice Wednesday.
But as was mentioned earlier, it makes it nearly impossible to write a clean season preview.
In deference, few names will be mentioned, maybe none at all outside of the keepers. It's an idea that goes against everything season outlooks are based upon, but this team at this point in its development needs a different type of handling.
Want to know who will be starting when Montana plays at Boise State on Aug. 19? Go to the roster page, put on a blindfold and pick a name. As of Aug. 2, she has the same chance as any other player.
Imagine.
This should be fun. But first, an attempted season preview to shed some light on what's going on.
An attempt at an opener of a season preview: There will be 29 anxious players taking the field Wednesday morning when the Montana soccer team opens its 2011 season. If you change your parameters to include those with the nervous energy of a first-year player, make it 30 to include Plakorus.
Plakorus arrived in Missoula in early February and got his head coaching baptism not by fire but in the low-pressure waters of the off-season, when everyone's a winner and there is plenty of time.
But now the fall has arrived, the team's championship season. Time becomes compressed due to the demands of travel, games and academics. It's when wins and losses count and the Big Sky Conference trophy is handed out.
"In some ways I feel just like a player," Plakorus, a first-time collegiate head coach, admitted last week. "I think we are all going to have that nervous energy about getting going.
"I have a combination of all kinds of emotions, but I'm definitely excited about this being my first fall as a head coach and the first fall with my team."
An attempt at explaining why Plakorus is here: Plakorus spent nine years as a fulltime assistant coach at the Division I level - two years at Iowa, one year at Tulsa, the last six at TCU - before becoming the third coach in Griz soccer history.
His arrival means the program was able to turn to a clean, new page in its history, but the dark ink of the last few seasons will continue to stain through until Plakorus's team can erase those memories.
Montana won a total of 16 matches the last four seasons. It's why Plakorus is here.
The mounting losses - an average of 12 per season since 2007 - were un-Montana-like, but perhaps more damning than the losses was how they happened.
The Grizzlies were outscored by a wide margin in each of the last four years, and the team's number of goals dropped precipitously from 20 in 2008 to 15 in 2009 to just eight a year ago - less than half a goal per game - when Montana ranked 311th out of 314 NCAA Division I teams and was outscored 39 to 8.
Montana scored more than one goal in a match just once last fall, and even that turned out to be a loss - 3-2 to Gonzaga. The struggles produced the squad Plakorus inherited last winter.
"The program seemed a little bit beaten down," he says now, a quick six months later. "The players just weren't enjoying the game.
"Winning can become a habit, but so can losing, and they were expecting things not to go their way.
"When you expect something to go wrong and you expect to lose, more times than not you're going to lose.
"The girls needed something different. They needed something to reawaken their joy of playing and regain that spark to compete again."
With the team thirsty for something new, perhaps any coach with a fresh voice could have produced a minor resurrection of the program in the early days of the off-season, but the players appear to have bought into Plakorus's vision, and the results from the spring season point to a team with a newfound love for the game and sense of purpose.
I don't care who the opponent was in March. Typing "3-0 victory" is a combination of keyboard strokes a long time coming for a soccer recap.
Making Plakorus's job easier is that what was lost - the team's confidence - is something that was certain to be quick to return given its strengths.
"This team's biggest strength is its internal drive and competitiveness," he said. "They want very much to be successful.
"When you have that work rate and desire, you can overcome a little lack of athleticism or technical or tactical knowledge." (At no point did Plakorus hint that his own team was deficient in any of these areas. It was just for example.)
"Their strengths make it easier for me, because one thing I always tell them is that I don't coach effort. That has to come from them, and with this team I don't think I ever have to worry about that."
An attempt to delicately touch on the goal-scoring problem that was for the most part non grata last fall: A fan with a myopic view of scoring in soccer - one player scores, 10 others stand around and watch her score, then everyone gets together for hugs - may ask, And just where are the goals going to come from?
With the graduation of Kaitlyn Heinsohn, who scored four of the team's eight goals a year ago, Plakorus will open practice with just six players who have seen at least one of their shots find the back of the net in their careers.
Junior Erin Craig enters the season with three career goals. No one else has more than one.
That's only eight returning goals. As a point of reference, New Mexico and Northern Arizona scored 12 goals between them last year in their victories over Montana.
But a broader more accurate view of scoring in soccer is what Plakorus has been blessed with. He knows that goal scorers are nice to have - pretty much a requirement for a championship team - but that scoring goals begins well before the point when players are jumping into their teammates' arms.
"The first part of scoring is being able to keep the ball," Plakorus explains. "That's one of the things we worked on in the spring. Be a threat when you have the ball.
"Don't be afraid of the responsibility of having the ball. Think attack and get after people."
That will be a novel approach this season at South Campus Stadium, at least for the home team. More attacking, less overanalyzing, in the end a return of the game to the players.
Plakorus also knows that "there is no definite formula where if you do this and you do that you'll get goals," so he knows his focus also needs to be on the other end of the field, where the Grizzlies gave up nearly 20 shots and a you're-not-going-to-win-many-games-doing-this 2.17 goals per game.
"I don't think it's necessarily about scoring six goals a game," he added. "It's also about limiting the other team from scoring so you don't have to score as much."
An attempt to describe what you can expect from Montana in 2011 and beyond: Plakorus can't guarantee high-scoring victories, but he is sure of one thing. His team will be entertaining and it will create opportunities to score.
At South Campus Stadium last year, the Grizzlies scored one goal or no goals in seven of their eight home matches, meaning entertainment and opportunities to score popped up in limited quantities.
If Plakorus's prescience matches his aplomb, opportunities should be plentiful this fall.
That will give fans a reason to return to South Campus Stadium's metal bleachers following a period when diminishing crowds experienced some get-out-of-your-seat-because-something-special-is-developing-before-our-very-eyes anticipation maybe once a half.
"I don't want to put it all on scoring, because it takes a lot of things coming together in the right way to score goals," Plakorus says.
"I want to focus on making good decisions and playing in an attacking way that creates opportunities that we can then have a chance to finish.
"We're going to have an entertaining style of play. People are going to enjoy what they are watching. They are going to want to come out and watch us."
An attempt to describe the openness of it all: Plakorus, for 11 years the defender of democracy as an Air Force officer, will apply the rules of social equality to his team when it starts battling for starting spots and playing time.
Give it any economic equivalency that comes to mind, maybe free market economy. Produce in Plakorus's system and he will have you on the field for his team.
Partly because of personnel the 2011 Montana soccer team have a new look. Only six returning players saw action in at least 15 games last year.
The rest of the team is a melting pot of players who have seen limited action due to injury or opportunity, those who redshirted last year and the incoming freshman class of eight.
Plakorus will watch his team practice Wednesday morning without prejudice toward past experiences or year in school.
It creates a unique opportunity of beginning a race at the same starting line for all 29 players, an especially good thing for players who perhaps wondered a year ago why they spent more time on the sideline than on the playing field, a sitting/playing equation that changed from game to game with little explanation.
"Experience can be a good thing," Plakorus says. "The players who have gone through the rigors of a college season can help your team a lot.
"At the same time this is new for everybody. It's going to be the first time anybody has gone through a preseason or season with me.
"We'll figure out what's best for our team, no matter if you're a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior. I won't be relying on one group more than any other.
"It's about our team coming together and being able to face adversity and still get things done."
And with that Plakorus opens the door for any or all of his incoming freshmen - the original group of six signees in February was called his best recruiting class in seven years by former coach Neil Sedgwick - to be contributors.
Most have high-level club experience, which in the modern system of youth soccer dwarfs anything players do with a high school team.
In fact Brooke Moody of Parker, Colo., was playing as recently as Sunday, as she and her teammates on the Colorado Rush dropped an overtime decision to FC Milwaukee for the U18 national championship in Phoenix.
"I'll give our freshmen the same opportunity to compete for a starting job that everybody else gets," Plakorus promised.
"They are all good enough to compete to play right away."
And that will put Plakorus's team-building abilities to the test. It will challenge his skill at unifying a group, a task that falls squarely on the shoulders of the head coach, even one in his first year.
The returning players all spent the spring season with the coach. They enjoy the advantage of having gone through the training, but that guarantees nothing, and Plakorus will give them the added responsibility of bringing the incoming freshmen up to speed.
Beyond Plakorus, it will challenge the players to play a small role of coach, even to players who are trying to earn minutes at the same position as the ones helping them.
"We don't have time to go through everything we did in the fall that we did in the spring," Plakorus says. "So they have to help me with each of our incoming players.
"They might be helping somebody who's fighting to take their spot, but that's part of being a team."
An attempt to break down the goalkeeper situation, with names finally being used because one of these three players will be in goal every minute this season, just the kind of succinctness and clarity this outlook deserves: Julianna Jack started the season's first six matches in 2010, but she did not play another minute and isn't returning in 2011, which leaves the team with two returners and one newcomer.
Sophomore Kendra McMillen started 11 matches as a true freshman. Despite playing well at times - particularly at Pacific where she made 16 saves and allowed just a single goal - she went 2-7-1, mainly because Montana scored an anemic three goals in the 11 matches she started.
Junior Kristen Hoon did not play before mid October, but she turned out to be a late-season surprise.
She played the final 27:10 in relief of the injured McMillen in Montana's 1-0 victory over Idaho State, she manned the goal the final 65 scoreless minutes in a 0-0 draw against Northern Colorado a week later, and she played all 90 minutes, getting her first collegiate shutout, in the Grizzlies' 1-0 win at Eastern Washington to close the season.
In all she played just over 182 minutes, faced 26 shots and did not allow a goal while making eight saves.
To McMillen and Hoon add incoming freshman Kelsey Carlson from Granite Falls, Wash., a player Plakorus - despite his frequent recruiting trips of the spring and summer - has yet to see in action.
One or maybe even two keepers will emerge as the season progresses under first-year assistant coach Lauren Robertson, a former Ohio State keeper who brings west from Columbus a Woody Hayes-like intensity.
If you could buy stock in prospects like MONTANA'S KEEPERS WILL BE AGGRESSIVE AND VOCAL, THEY WILL OWN THE SIX-YARD BOX, AND THEY WILL BE GIVING UP FEWER THAN TWO GOALS PER GAME, buy it with all the money you can spare.
It's likely Robertson will have it no other way.
An attempt to encapsulate Plakorus's views on goal-setting: This is the point in an article where the standard drivel is usually written about a team's goals for its non-conference schedule, the things they want to build toward before they move into the all-important second season: Big Sky Conference play.
That's hogwash, claims the blunt Plakorus.
He's a big-picture guy. Take care of these big things and those little things will fall into place. Or maybe he's a small-picture guy. Take care of the little things and the big items like conference championships and winning records will take care of themselves.
Whatever. Let him explain: "Our goals won't change as we go from preseason to non-conference to conference. We'll always have three things we're focused on.
"First, always giving a relentless effort. Second, being a team in everything we do - and that means both helping each other and pushing each other to be successful. And third, being disciplined in everything we do."
If you recall, that list also made the article announcing Plakorus had been hired, so it's obviously what he believes in.
"I want to focus on the process of playing better," he continues. "I want our question to be, Are we playing at our best level?, not, Are we winning or are we losing?
"This is soccer. You can play a fantastic game and play better than the other team, but you can still lose the game.
"Of course we want what every team wants: To win the conference in the regular season and the tournament and go to the NCAA tournament and have a winning record.
"But we're not going to focus on just those things. We are going to focus on the process that can get us there, and not the end result."
An attempt at a conclusion to what wasn't really a preview and probably did not answer very many questions: Plakorus does not know what to expect Wednesday morning. As any coach of a fall sport must do, Plakorus sent his team on its way last spring with seven words that all coaches would dread: Our season is now in your hands.
Meaning there is a three-month window during the nicest weather months of the year, when players must weigh the benefits of maintaining their training and fitness against all the temptations that come with free time, sunshine and no homework.
"For those three months (of May, June and July), I can't make them train," Plakorus somewhat sadly acquiesces. "They have to make the choice to prepare themselves.
"Everything we gained in the spring, have the players continued on with that through the summer? What they chose to do over the summer is how we're going to start the season."
Wednesday morning Plakorus will discover what the last three months have wrought.
