Humboldt State University’s Women’s Soccer team kicked of it’s season with two impressive wins against Fresno Pacific and Colorado Mesa to end up 2-0 at the Lumberjack Classic.
Saturday against Fresno Pacific, HSU got a steady dose of Alex Jenkins. Jenkins, a junior, scored two goals. The first goal came at 30:32 and the second at 89:23.
“Sometimes when you have the fastest girl in Californa running around, sometimes you’ll score goals,” Said Head Coach Paul Karver.
Jenkins led the Lumberjacks in points a season ago, and was the team’s second leading goal scorer from a season ago. She already has half as many goals in the first two games this year as she did last season.
“Focusing and calming my nerves helped me before the game,” said Jenkins. “The one thing I can control is my work rate, after everything will follow.”
Defensively the Lumberjacks pitched a shutout. Humboldt State goalkeeper, Sophomore Katelin Talbert recorded nine saves on the day, as the team outshot the Sunbirds 11-10.
Helping patrol the back line was one of the four seniors on this years team, McCall Madriago.
“We have a lot of intelligence on this team,” said Madriago. “You can definitely see out there we are comfortable and we trust each other.”
Coming off of a four win season. The Lumberjacks can only improve. With only five new players this season. The team brings back experience that’s guaranteed to help this year.
“The second game of a weekend tournament is always about guts and determination,” said Karver. “We put ourselves in some bad situations, our back line came up huge with a shutout.”
In its first regular season game of the year. The Lumberjacks got a 2-1 win over Colorado Mesa from a late goal by Myriah Epino that capped the victory.
Freshman, Sabine Postma, scored the first goal of the season for HSU.
In his first three years as head coach, Karver had seen steady improvement in each of his teams. Topping his totals for wins each year until last. He hopes to make a significant jump this year.
“We scheduled these games knowing we’d have great competition,” said Karver. “For us to come out of this week 2-0 is fantastic.”
The maturity and the progress the players have made is what have Karver excited for a rebound season for HSU.
“We have players that have really embraced the roles and leadership that we’ve asked them to,” said Karver. “The team dynamic is better then it’s ever been.”
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