The Augustana Women’s soccer team’s season came to a close after a recent defeat. Last Saturday, Oct. 28, the Vikings were defeated 1-0 in overtime by Millikin University in the CCIW quarterfinals.
This ended their season with a record of 10-5-4. The team placed fifth in the conference and despite the loss, still had a lot of success throughout the season.
“This season was a success,” Head Coach Scott Mejia said. “I think that the team reached many of the goals that we kind of set and that they set for themselves. We were a young team, so I think we achieved many great things.”
One of the many successes of the season was having three all-conference players on the team: junior Abby Degustino, senior Liesl Whitener and senior Janey Castoe, who was also named the CCIW Goalkeeper of the Year.
“It is a huge honor to be named the inaugural goalie of the year,” Castoe said. “I had a goal at the beginning of the season to have the highest save percentage in the CCIW. We had a new goalie coach this year who pushed me, and I think the hard work paid off.”
As well as having 12 shutouts, Castoe had 84 saves and only allowed 13 goals this season. Overall, Castoe believes that the defense on the team grew this year and contributed greatly to her receiving goalie of the year.
“As a team, we all worked hard to get where we were,” Castoe said. “The Augie defense was a powerhouse this year and went above and beyond any of our expectations.”
On the other side of the ball, Whitener was named to the second all-conference team and led the women’s soccer team with the most goals scored this year, with 12 goals.
“Honored to get the award, but I feel like it’s not an individual effort, it’s a team effort,” Whitener said.
As a whole, the team scored 20 goals this year and only allowed 20 goals into the net. However, the team also had 108 saves throughout the season. Although the season was good, there is still more to be done.
“We need to become a better-attacking team,” Mejia said. “I think we defend as well as anyone in the country, and I think we need to become a little more dangerous and take more risks going forward.”
Looking forward to next season, the team hopes to improve on what they learned this year and continue to work during the off-season to have an even better season next year.
“We’re trying to go to Europe this summer with the team… which I think would be great for their development,” Mejia said. “We’re just hoping to have another strong recruiting class and continue to build on what we set as a foundation this year. I think because we were so young, the future’s bright as long as this group continues to develop.”