For the Hoyas (5-9-5, 2-7-2), this season was supposed to be their best ever. Before it began, Head Coach Dave Nolan asserted that “this is the best team, talent-wise, I have ever had. This is the best team to play for Georgetown.”
But the third-year head coach soon saw portents of a season marred with an inability to score goals and a strangely high number of ties.
In a preseason game, Georgetown took a draw against then-unranked William and Mary.
“[Tribe coach John Daly and I] both agreed to play our best players for the first 60 minutes, and we did,” Nolan said. “There was nothing you could put between us that day. And if you told me that day they’d be 11-1-1 and ranked in the top 25 and we’d be 4-6-4, I wouldn’t have believed either of those things.”
The Tribe is now ranked No. 12 in the nation and is riding the best season in school history. As for Georgetown, the signs of doom and gloom began to show themselves before even a minute of soccer was played. Outstanding junior midfielder Sara Jordan became ill and would miss the entire season. Jordan was supposed to be a wing player, complementing senior midfielder Chrissy Skogen on the right side.
Her absence was missed on the offensive end, especially by Nolan, who called her “the best offensive player we have.” After 10 games last season, Georgetown had scored 22 goals; after 10 games this season, the Hoyas only scored 10 goals. Jordan’s absence forced a midfielder-by-committee, with no single player able to pick up the production from last season.
The offensive woes were what doomed the Hoyas, not failures on defense. After last season, when the defense allowed 1.5 goals per game, junior keeper Jade Higgins and the back line clamped down.
Led by senior Alexandra Hardy, sophomores Stephanie Zare and Laura Snyder, and junior Karen Waskewich, the defense was the only unit that played consistently all season. The Hoyas’ `D’ never allowed more than three goals, and the Hoyas only allowed .99 goals per game this season.
Georgetown’s five ties were low-scoring, and five losses came by only one goal.
Skogen bore the brunt of offensive pressure and scored six goals this year, four fewer than last year – but last year she had the chance to take four penalty shots.
One can point to several games as chances that Georgetown let slip away. Against James Madison on Sept. 17, at Seton Hall on Sept. 24, against Providence on Sept. 29 and at Cincinnati and Louisville on Oct. 6-8, the Hoyas were consistently within range of victory. In each case, Georgetown held the lead at some point or missed numerous opportunities to score the winning goal but did not.
Georgetown’s bad luck, inability, misfortune and poor execution in closing out opportunities nullified what were, by all accounts, fine shows of effort. In Division I college soccer, the currency is what wins, not the effort behind it.
The Hoyas’ five wins were Georgetown’s fewest since the team had four victories in 1998. Only one other time (1995) has a Georgetown squad won as few as five games.