by Carmen Ruiz Fernandez
he Cal Poly Humboldt Women and Men’s Soccer Team gathered in the middle of the college creek field on Oct. 19 before their matches to celebrate the Senior Day. Seniors were honored with flowers, photo frames capturing their journey as soccer players, speeches from the coaching staff highlighting their accomplishments and the support of their families, who stood with them on the field through tears of pride.
For Head Men’s Soccer Coach Fred Jungeman, Senior Day is a special time to reflect on how far the graduating seniors have come as well as their accomplishments on the team. At the ceremony, the women’s team honored eight graduating seniors: Frida Duran Arellano, Annie Hoffman, Josie Wolitzky, Carson Thomson-Terrel, Alexis Blue, Morgan Young, Payton Heaney and Camryn Patten. The men’s team only celebrated one: Paris Ruiz. This Senior Day was held earlier than usual, since both teams still have a couple more home games left, and Jungeman said that’s when the real emotions will come out.
“It’s a little bit hard to put into words, because it isn’t the last time,” Jungeman said. “I think the real emotions will come out in the actual last game for us. Today is just an opportunity for us to reflect on who they are, and an opportunity for us to celebrate the seniors.”
Both the men and women’s teams played against the California State San Bernardino Coyotes. The women’s team played first, kicking off at 11:30 a.m.. Both teams scored a goal during the first 10 minutes of the first half, but the Coyotes scored two more goals at the beginning of the second half. Humboldt’s Alia Prentiss was able to score a second goal at the 75th minute of the game, but came up short once the whistle was blown after 90 minutes. Josie Walets, senior center defender on the women’s soccer team, described this game as a tough one. She mentions there were a lot of emotions in it as well, since it was their senior game, and the first time they had a goal scored against them this season.
“I think our team still battled the whole way through,” Walets said. “We still got two goals, and I think we performed well, even though it was a little more tough.”
The men’s team started playing at around 2:30 p.m.. The Jacks also lost against the Coyotes, finishing with a score of 1-2. San Bernardino had a decisive advantage in the first half, scoring back to back goals in the minutes 20 and 23. The match reached a stalemate in the second half — however, the Jacks were able to put something together on the offensive side and defender Robert Somerville was able to put the ball in the back of the net in the 71st minute.
Senior midfielder Paris Ruiz of the men’s soccer team noticed how his team was a bit unconcentrated in the first half of the game, reflecting on why they had some previous rough games before this one. However, he recognized his team’s effort in the second half, as they finally were able to represent the team.
“We started off a little slow,” Ruiz said. “Before the game, we talked about needing to bring more. We’ve had a couple rough games in the coming up to this game. So, we started off saying, we need to put in more effort, more everything, to try to succeed. I think that in the second half, we actually built up and exceeded that.”
Carmen is a freshman journalism major whose passion is to write stories for newspapers. She is a writer and photographer, and likes to read and take walks through the forest in her free time. She can be reached at cr433@humboldt.edu