Princeton Opens Women's Soccer Season, Looks To End It In NCAA Tournament For Sixth Straight Year

Aug. 30, 2004

The Princeton women's soccer team is one of 19 in Division I to have played in the NCAA tournament each of the last five years. The Tiges open the 2004 season looking to stretch that streak to six - and to regain the Ivy League championship they won three of the last four years. The 2004 outlook: 2004 Princeton Women's Soccer ... Q&A What was Princeton's final RPI in 2003? 23. What has Princeton done each of the last five years? Advanced to the NCAA tournament. What has Princeton done three times in the last four years? Won the Ivy League championship. How many returning starters are there for 2004? Nine. Who is the only female head coach in Ivy League women's soccer? Julie Shackford. What has Julie Shackford done two-thirds of the time as Princeton head coach? Won. How many wins at Princeton did Julie Shackford have at the end of the 2003 season? 98. Shackford is 98-49-10 in her nine seasons at Princeton. Where does Julie Shackford rank all-time in wins as a soccer coach at Princeton? First among women's coaches and second among men's coaches, trailing only the 136 won by Jimmy Reed from 1938-66. What did the Princeton women's soccer team do from Aug. 13 through Aug. 24 this past summer? Travel through Germany, playing four games against top German competition while also participating in a host of educational and cultural activities. It was the second time Julie Shackford has taken a team to Europe in the preseason. How many goals did Princeton score in 2003? 38. How many were scored by players returning in 2004? 34. How many seniors does Princeton have in 2004? Ten. It is the largest class in Julie Shackford's first decade as Princeton coach. Who are the captains? Princeton's three captains in 2004 will be defender Janine Willis, defender Brea Griffiths and midfielder Sylvia Morelli. Griffiths was also a captain in 2003. How many returning first-team All-Ivy League selections are there? Three, including the league's Player of the Year. Those three-Player of the Year Esmeralda Negron, Emily Behncke, Rochelle Willis-were also named to the All-Mid-Atlantic Region team. Princeton has two returning second-team All-Ivy selections: Maura Gallagher and Janine Willis. How many players who have represented their country's national team are there on this year's Princeton team? Two. Esmeralda Negron made her international debut this past summer as part of the United States National Under-21 team, competing in the Nordic Cup in Iceland. Freshman Diana Matheson is a member of the Canadian National Team, and she has competed 28 times for Canada, including in the most recent Women's World Cup. How many goals did Esmeralda Negron score a year ago? Thirteen, to tie the school single-season record set by Susan Mooney in 1981, the first year of varsity women's soccer at Princeton. For the record, Negron was the Ivy League Player of the Year, a third-team All-America, a unanimous first-team All-Ivy selection and first-team All-Mid-Atlantic Region. How many goals does Esmeralda Negron need to tie the school career record? Fourteen, which would surpass last year's single-season record by one. Negron enters her senior year with 27 career goals, already second-best all-time at Princeton. She trails only Linda DeBoer, who scored 41 in the early years of the program in the early 1980s. Negron also enters her senior year with 59 career points, tied for the second-best total in school history with Dana DeCore '99 and Nancy Foot '91. Negron needs 35 points to tie DeBoer's school record as well. How does Emily Behncke compare? Esmeralda Negron had 14 goals in her first two seasons combined. Emily Behncke has 12 goals through two years, including seven a year ago as a sophomore. She also added five assists last year as she followed up the 2002 Ivy League Rookie of the Year award with first-team All-Ivy recognition as a sophomore. Behncke was also an All-Mid-Atlantic Region selection as well. Who led the team in assists a year ago? Maura Gallagher had her second straight big year, going for four goals and a team-best six assists as a sophomore to run her two-year totals to seven goals and 10 assists. Gallagher was a second-team All-Ivy pick in 2003. What other returning players are threats to score goals? Senior Kristina Fontanez scored 14 goals and had three assists in her first three seasons, and she has played in every game of her career. She gives Princeton a strong veteran presence on offense to complement Esmeralda Negron, Emily Behncke and Maura Gallagher. Meghan Farrell was a two-time Ivy League Rookie of the Week last year, when she scored three goals and had two assists. The highlight of Farrell's freshman year was her overtime goal in a 1-0 win at Brown. Elizabeth Pillion, another senior, had two goals and two assists a year ago; Pillion is also a first-team All-America and two-time NCAA champion in lacrosse. Junior Romy Trigg-Smith, who started every game a year ago on defense, will probably move to her more natural midfield position this year, where she will be able to take advantage of her offensive abilities. Classmate Maija Garnaas, a District II Academic All-America a year ago, is another veteran midfielder who has been a key to the offense the last two years. Sylvia Morelli, one of the three captains this season, is fully healthy after missing her sophomore year to a knee injury two years ago; she was a solid contributor a year ago as well. Three other seniors, Olivia Albrecht, Catherine Byrd and Beth Hendricks, and sophomore Amanda Ferranti will all push for playing time. What is the school record for most games started in a career? Seventy, set a year ago by Liz Bell. How many games has Rochelle Willis started in three years? Fifty-three, or every game Princeton has played in that time. With 17 games on the regular-season schedule this year, Willis can tie Bell's mark. More importantly, Willis and her sister Janine, who has started 52 of the 53 games, and Brea Griffiths, 48 starts in 53 games including 33 of 34 the last two years, give Princeton three four-year starters on defense. Each of the three has been named either first- or second-team All-Ivy league at least once in her career. Sophomore Christina Costantino, a graduate of the same Lake Braddock High School in Northern Virginia as Tiger coach Julie Shackford, could be the other starter on defense to replace Romy Trigg-Smith, who moves to the midfield after starting all 17 games a year ago on defense. How many shutouts does Princeton have since Rochelle Willis, Janine Willis and Brea Griffiths began starting on defense 2001? Twenty-three. In addition, Princeton has allowed no goals or one goal in 48 of the 53 games in that time. Who will be the goalkeeper? A year ago, Princeton used almost a 50-50 rotation of Emily Vogelzang and Madeleine Jackson in goal. Both are back for the junior years, and another rotation is certainly possible. For the sake of accuracy, Vogelzang actually played 54.7% of the minutes a year ago. The two goalkeepers had nearly identical goals-against averages of 1.12 (Jackson) and 1.14 (Vogelzang). Megan Bernard, another junior, is back for her third year as well, and she will continue to push the other two for the top spot. Who are the newcomers? The Princeton Class of 2008 goes eight-deep and represents seven different states and one Canadian province, which gives an indication of the national scope of the program. The newcomers come from as close as 15 miles from Princeton and as far away as 3,000 miles, and they join a team that already features three other Canadians, two other Californians, a Hawaiian and five Virginians. The class consists of seven players who graduated high school a year ago and one who was admitted to Princeton in 2003 and deferred for a year. That eighth player, Diana Matheson, spent the past year as a member of the Canadian National Team, competing in the Women's World Cup and in the Olympic qualifying process. Matheson brings the experience of 28 appearances for the Canadian team, including all six games in the 2003 World Cup, to her first season in the Ivy League. The other recruits feature one goalkeeper (Maren Dale of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.), defenders Alyssa Salvo (East Islip, N.Y.), Meredith Wall (Cedar Park, Texas) and Lisa Chinn (East Brunswick, N.J.), midfielders Ashley Beyers (Danville, Calif.) and Aubrey Wagenseller (Louisville, Ky.) and forward Melissa Whitley of Silver Spring, Md. What does the schedule look like? The first game of the 2004 season features Texas A&M, a Sweet 16 team a year ago, and begins a stretch where Princeton will play four teams from the 2003 NCAA tournament in its first five games. Included in that run is a rematch with Villanova, who defeated Princeton 2-1 in the opening round a year ago. Princeton also faces NCAA teams UNC Greensboro and Wake Forest on an early-season trip to North Carolina before heading into the Ivy League schedule at Yale Sept. 24. The game against Villanova is part of a rotating event that is held at Penn this year; Princeton's other game in the tournament will be against Vanderbilt of the Southeastern Conference. In all Princeton will face six teams that played in the 2003 NCAA tournament, including back-to-back early October games at home against Dartmouth and Rutgers.

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