Soccer: Panthers try to salvage season

Two months ago, the Pitt women’s soccer team shut out Delaware behind Ashley Cuba’s lone… Two months ago, the Pitt women’s soccer team shut out Delaware behind Ashley Cuba’s lone goal — a redirect finish of Ali Matisse’s header. It was Pitt’s first victory of the season.

But then the team went 0-1-1 in the Pitt Soccer Classic, and right after that the athletes traveled to Michigan, where Central Michigan and Oakland outscored Pitt 5-0.

So head coach Sue-Moy Chin, frustrated with her team’s lack of effort, decided to take action.

“We were on the bus, heading home around 10 o’clock Sunday night,” sophomore Katie Lippert said, “and Coach told us to be at the field the next morning at six — to run.”

As instructed, the players showed up for practice before the sun came up, running sprints in the dark until they could barely feel their legs.

“That was a good turning point for the girls,” Chin said. “It’s probably a bad memory for them, but I think they’ll look back on it and kind of laugh and bond over it. That was a little bit of a lesson — if we’re not going to work hard on the ball, let’s work hard off the ball. Let’s understand that it takes an incredible amount of hard work to win soccer games.”

For a team that qualified for the Big East Tournament in 2010, returned 12 letterwinners and brought in a strong freshman class, coming out of the gate slow was unexpected. In that sense, Chin’s wake-up call was needed.

“It was brutal — it was definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Lippert said. “But it brought us closer together as a team.”

Just not close enough.

The Panthers are in last place in their division, six points out of fifth place. Only five teams will make the Big East tournament. Pitt must find a way to win its remaining games against Connecticut, Providence, and first-place West Virginia — and have multiple teams lose — in order to get a chance of making it into the Big East tournament.

So this is a time to review some lessons learned and look back on the best of a bad season. For the Panthers, some believe the wins and losses don’t represent their talent.

“I don’t think that our record reflected how good of a team we actually were this season,” freshman Ali Matisse said.

Pitt picked up its first conference win last Sunday against St. Johns. The victory brought Pitt’s conference record to 1-5-2 and its overall record to 2-10-4, and marked the team’s first win since Delaware.

In the two months between those victories, the Panthers have suffered eight losses and managed three ties.

A winless streak started after Chin’s intense workout, when Pitt was shutout 3-0 in a Friday night match-up against nationally ranked Marquette. This time, it was the captains — the only three seniors on the team — who acted, calling for an impromptu Saturday night practice. In fact, the coaches weren’t allowed to come.

“Katie Ruhe, Katheryn Kunugi, and Kristina Rioux got us all together and ran practice,” sophomore Caroline Keefer said. “We went out and played a bunch of fun games to get our mind off of the stress that was being put on us by [the] coaches. We were able to relax and have fun. We played really well after that.”

The next day, the Panthers tied South Florida, 2-2. The following Friday, they played Rutgers to a scoreless tie.

But things went south from there. Pitt went on a four-game losing skid, during which it was outscored 15-1. That streak ended with Sunday’s six-goal performance over St. Johns.

Sunday being the exception, many of the Panthers’ problems this season were caused by a persistent inability to score. Pitt is averaging 0.53 goals per game — compared with their opponents’ 2.67 — and is being outshot by an average of five shots per game.

Chin said that, at times, her team was just unfortunate. She pointed to the South Florida game as a prime example of her team “just not getting the breaks.”

“The South Florida game wasn’t terrible, but it kind of summed up our season,” Chin said. “We’re outplaying them, and then our first really good goal-scoring opportunity — Katie Ruhe takes a great shot from distance — the ball hits the post, the goalkeeper turns around, it bounces back and hits her in the head, then goes over the crossbar.”

Although it has taken time, the athletes said they’ve started to come together as a cohesive unit — a sort of soccer sorority formed largely in part through their collective participation in bizarre games and rituals. With a team comprised of nine freshmen, six sophomores, four juniors and only three seniors, any team bonding this year could mean good things to come down the road.

Before matches and during practice, the athletes play “the Animal Game,” where they form a circle and juggle the ball to one another.

“If you mess up, you have to spell-out an animal,” Matisse said. “So, say the animal was a cat, and you mess up three times — you have to spell ‘C-A-T.’ Then you have to act as a cat in the middle of the circle in front of all the girls.”

They dance, too.

“Before games, our team has a dance party in the locker room,” Lippert said. “We just blast music. One of our favorites is the John Wall dance — we all do it. That’s probably the cheesiest thing we do. But we have it down. It helps us all loosen up and not stress out.”

But the revelry ends as soon as the game begins — and, at least 10 times this season, it ended definitely.

“After the game, it’s not a joking-around mood,” Lippert said. “That’s only for when we win, which we’ve struggled to do this year.”

The Panthers travel to Connecticut Friday to take on the division’s fifth-place Huskies (6-6-2, 3-3-2).