ETSU women’s soccer: A look back at an historic season

The 2016 women’s soccer team will go down in history for sure.

Despite falling to Samford in the Southern Conference Championship game, the Bucs ended the season breaking numerous records.

They were the first to have 10 wins at home (Summer-Taylor Stadium), first to only allow five goals at home, first to achieve the No. 2 seed in the SoCon Tournament, first to appear in a championship game, the first to have six players named to the all-conference team and the first to have eight shutouts in program history.

“For us it’s more about that process, than the outcome,” said ETSU women’s head coach Adam Sayers. “It was important that we continued to work on our principles and our philosophy and continue to improve all aspects of our game. And I think we did that brilliantly.”

The Bucs ended their season with an overall record of 13-6-2 and 6-2-1 in conference play coached by Sayers in his sixth season at ETSU.

“It feels good, but it has nothing to do with me,” Sayers said. “It’s all about the players. Our [coaches] main job is to set up the environment for the players to work in and the framework of the team for the players to base themselves out of. From there it’s all up to the players and they were absolutely brilliant so all of the credit that we’ve been given this season and all of the successful that we’ve achieves is totally down to players.”

The team averaged 2.24 goals scored per game, 15.4 shots a game, 44 assists and five for six on penalty kicks. The Bucs only allowed their opponents 1.29 goals scored a game, 10.7 shots a game, 28 assists and only one penalty kick.

The Bucs have six seniors who helped contribute to this successful season and stepped up in tournament play.

The seniors on the team are Cecilia Re (Busnago, Italy), who earned 2016 SoCon All-Tournament Team; Molly Collinson (Cramlington, England), who earned Second Team All-SoCon; Jasmine Elliot (Preston, England); Simona Koren (Graz, Austria); Thomai Vardali (Koufalia, Greece); and Anna Yancey (Rosemark, Tenn.)

“We had a great group of seniors,” Sayers said. “All of the experience that they were able to utilize this season was really good for the young players. We have a good core group of players coming back so the future looks bright. The players were magnificent this season and I couldn’t be happier with them.”

The team will now come back after winter break and begin preparing for next season.