Time to start a new thread for 2011. The link for the 2010 thread can be found at Stanford University 2010 [R]. ===== Congratulations to Christen Press for earning college soccer's most prestigious award, the Hermann Trophy [link]
Like Kelley O'Hara before her, hands down the best college soccer player in the United States. Congratulations, Christen!
Congrats to Ms. Press! Graham Hays at ESPN did a great job describing her brilliance: http://espn.go.com/ncaa/blog/_/name/college_sports/id/6001299/press-finishes-career-top
Christen is #1 By far the best College player in 2010 and if I were the WNY Flash coach I would draft her #1. Having Ali and Mo together would be fan-tastic.
Press would have been in Chicago playing for the Red Stars in 2011 if we still had a team. Chicago had the second pick in the draft and and Naimo would have def. chosen her. Oh well (sigh). As far as Noyola, good for her. Mexico is definately on the right path. I do hope that American coaches are reading this, however, to no avail.
I'm not sure why you would hope that. Certainly after stealing the ball and then setting up the tying goal in the opening game of the U20 WC, the coaches knew who she was. Her reward for that was 33 minutes of playing time in one of the next three games.
The archaic style of play that they insist on using will eventually be our downfall. Mexico I would expect has a much smaller talent pool to draw from but at least they're trying to play the game the way it was meant to be played.
Agreed. She made a great decision. It will be fun to see how the retooled younger USWNT stacks up against the Mexico WNT in the future.
Regarding T, I've always felt that her talents and style of play were not a good fit with the unwritten doctrine of the clowns who run the national team. My comments from August 2008 [link] T made a great decision to further her international playing career. T's decision sets a precedent - never before has such a heralded player from the American youth system decide to play for MEX. All the best to T and Mexico.
The real shame of it is that players like Noyola with exceptional technical ability are being developed by the American youth soccer system and they almost universally are not being rewarded by the WNT. It takes talent and hard-earned skill to become a player like her and very little to become a large brute. Yet what does the WNT select time and again?
Until there are objective standards and measurements for individual soccer performance excellence, it will be a beauty contest. Some like tall, short, thin, curvy, blonde, brunette, red - whether its recruitment by WNT, college coaches or club coaches or just mom and dad's opinions - a beauty contest nonetheless.
It is hard to imagine what you might mean by "objective" individual performance standards. While all kinds of stats could be generated about individual players (foot speed, vision, creativity, speed of decisions, specific technical abilities, etc.), there are two issues that complicate such "objective" criteria for selecting players for a team. One will be the "fit" of a particular player into the "chemistry" of a given team. Players adopt different roles on a team depending on the style and chemistry of the other players around them. These roles change, and only the best coaches can predict what role a specific player will be able to change toward, once integrated into a new team environment. Secondly, there will always be "intangibles" that will separate out the truly outstanding players and in the sense that these "intangibles" will be seen and valued differently by different coaching staffs. Beauty will indeed always remain in the eye of the beholder. Players like Noyola are highly valued because they can adapt their skills to different team environments. Anson Dorance -who knows a thing or two about evaluating players- is on record as saying that Noyola was one of the key players who he really wanted to recruit based both on her skill set and her advanced sense of the game. I believe that she would have thrived as much at UNC as she has at Stanford, but she would have adapted differently. It is clearly her choice that she chooses Mexico just as she choose Stanford based on how she sees herself adapting to fit in.
Her lack of speed is why. That was quite evident in the championship game where PR had her subbed out. She is a strong technical player but her lack of speed does present some problems with fitting in with the WNT.
Pressing Matters [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rc8-usmhp0"]YouTube - Jan. 15, 2011: Pressing Matters[/ame]
cachundo- thanks for finding and passing along all these stanford items. I would never have been able to have all the info about the team without you. also- your critiques and analysis of games was always very helpful and you should ignore the comments of the parents who did not want to read anything negative about their daughters. i felt that you always were giving an honest opinion and we have to take it at that. may not agree but it is valuable.
Thanks for the kind words cardinalfan. But wait til the day I write something you don't agree with. ===== image courtesy of stanfordphoto.com from the Stanford Magazine: The Urge to Win
