Another season has come and gone for Georgetown, and like in August, action off the field is creating more of a buzz than the action on it.

Over the summer, the surprise exit of eight-season veteran Head Coach Laurie Carroll sent the team into a state of flux just three weeks before the start of the season.

The season’s few bright spots were the two victories in the earlier part of the season – the “flashes” of brilliance, as interim Head Coach Tiffany Marsh once described them, are things the team can build off of.

Or at least what is left of the team.

Five non-seniors have left the team since the season ended, leaving only 11 returning members for next season after two players departed midseason.

Junior defender Katie Devaney and freshman goalkeeper Tiffany Kaszuba both left the team midseason, while sophomore midfielders Christen Aiken and Alice Murnen, forward Lindsay Moramarco, defender Jen Sachs and freshman midfielder Sarah Wheeler left the team after the season ended earlier this month.

According to a player that is still on the team who was granted anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record, most of those who left the team did so for academic reasons.

“It gets really hard balancing studies with practices,” she said. “And since other schools’ programs are a lot older than ours, we have to play them at home a lot and the number of away games really does distract from schoolwork, so I think that’s the main reason behind it.”

With its old home field, Kehoe, in disrepair, Georgetown only played five `home’ games at the University of aryland-College Park this season.

Devaney said that she had other reasons for leaving.

“The reason I left the team was playing time,” she said. “I needed more time to experience college as a non-athlete. It was just my time to retire.”

Murnen said that she quit for personal reasons.

“I quit because I felt it was time for me to move on to other things, and the time commitment was too much to permit that.”

Under Carroll, academics was not a weakness for the team. While Georgetown was overmatched against Big East opponents on the field, it collected four consecutive NFHCA academic team awards for having a cumulative GPA over 3.0.

With three seniors graduating – defenders Deirdre McShea, Lauren Sheets and Kristin Twomey – in addition to the seven players who left the team, 10 out of 21 members of the team on opening day will not return for the fall 2008 season.

Despite the losing season and a -3.24 scoring differential, some of the players felt that Marsh was not handed a full deck to begin the season, having only weeks to acclimate to Georgetown before games began.

“I think Tiffany Marsh did the best she could have [this season],” Devaney said. “She has a lot of playing experience and knows the game very well, and [knows] what we need to do to prepare for the season.”

The anonymous team member said that Marsh’s constant encouragement and positive outlook were beneficial to the team, though it appeared there were no silver linings in being outscored 37-7 in the Big East schedule.

And now Marsh faces the daunting task of finding adequate replacements to fill in gaping holes. Marsh said that she has four commits for next season, which would give the team 15 players. By comparison, Big East champion Connecticut has 24 players and Rutgers, which finished just ahead of Georgetown in the Big East standings, has 26 players.

“From day one when we got in here, we started recruiting,” Marsh said. “We have four committed now, and we’re looking to bring in a few more. We have a big recruiting tournament we’re going to next week as well.”