Looking back on the season, head coach Rich Manning feels happy with how the seniors have performed this year. As a group, Manning said, the seniors have been playing the best soccer of their college careers.

Taylor Slattery has scored a total of eight goals in her career as forward while Cabria Turang notched her first goal of her career in the game against North Dakota State as midfielder. Both seniors are also two-time Pac-12 All-Academic players.

Senior Kate Rogers has also had a great season and career alongside her teammates: not only has she been named to the Pac-12 All-Academic team three-times, but she has scored seven goals, and she has 10 assists. Rogers was also just named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week.

“They have been asked to play different roles on the team and I think they have all accepted them well, and that again helps the team kind of form and have a chance to excel,” Manning said.  

Skolmoski earns third award

Sophomore Hailey Skolmoski was named Academic All-District Team for Region 8 last week by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

Skolmoski, who currently holds a 3.88 GPA in education, has been recognized as one of the top student-athletes both on the field and in the classroom, and she is only one of two sophomores on a 13-player roster.

Manning thinks Skolmoski is having a historic season. 

“If you look her season, she has had clutch performances and scored clutch goals that win games for us,” Manning said. “She set a pretty high standard for her junior year. I hope she keeps raising the bar, because she has to jump higher next year, but it is really rewarding to see her perform so well coming off an injury.”

Skolmoski, though, doesn’t look at the awards. She looks at the opportunities she has given her team, and it makes her feel good to be back out on the field, contributing to their success.

“I feel like the season has been going really well, more than anything I could have dreamed of coming off of an injury last year,” Skolmoski said. “It has been really fun just being back out on the field and just being able to help my team this season, and getting us closer to the goals we had set for ourselves.”

With all that said and done, Manning said he feels Skolmoski still has room to improve. While she is still learning her position, Manning thinks think if she plays that position more often, Skolmoski will continue to get better.

Room for improvement, but still excelling

With the success the team has been having, Skolmoski thinks her team excels at every challenge thrown their way, and they are always upbeat. 

“We take it one minute, play, game at a time,” Skolmoski said. “We also make sure we are all on the same page and willing to work for each other, so I think that is something we have been really good at this season.”

According to Manning, the team is relentless on the field, and regardless of what happens, they are ready for the next play.

“They have been able to make really good adjustments during the course of the games,” Manning said. “That’s what is required against these teams that are really good, because if they make a change, then the state of the game changes.”

But there is always room for improvement. While Manning thinks the team needs to improve on speed throughout the game, Skolmoski added that the team needs to get better at putting a full game together.

“I think that we have had a lot of games where we have put together a really good first half and not so good second half, or an okay first half and a really good second half,” Skolmoski said. “I think it is important that we are able to put together a full 90 minute game.”

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