Next year

We know who is leaving, we THINK we know where the holes will be, but do we have any idea of what we will look like?

Redshirts: Megan Sweeney & Rachael Rapinoe were going to apply. Korie was not sure if she would apply. Discussion elsewhere on this forum indicated Megan Rapinoe might be eligible for a 2nd redshirt (which surprised me) but that she likely would not request it. Any updates on any of these?

National team commitments: Do we having any current or incoming players who are likely to miss next season to allow them to play on a select team?

Is Hailee willing to live in Kelsey’s shadow for 2 more years, especially after Kelsey's grand performance against UCLA?

A healthy Megan Rapinoe should give us both some attitude and another powerful leg up front. Michelle has the wheels and the leg. Sophie has a strong leg also, but will she remain up front? Will Rachael?

Megan Sweeney & Korie will likely fill spots in back. Will Jessica stay back there?

There is a very lengthy topic elsewhere on this forum that lists our expected incoming frosh. How will they fit in? A high HS ranking doesn’t necessarily guarantee college success.

Lots of room for conjectures and predictions

uprookie,
from the recruitment thread from people i preceive to be very in touch with the program, i'm not worried. we have some very fine recruits coming in, an i for one am very excitied!

UPWSRookie - Great questions. Great thread you've started. Let me give it a shot, and I'm sure the real knowledgeable heavyweights will be adding to this thread soon. (If not, I'll bonk them on the head.)

Redshirts: Megan Sweeney, Rachael and Korie are definitely redshirting. I spoke with Korie a while back and she told me that she was probably going to redshirt unless Emily or Kelli were unavailable. If that happened Korie would have played and lost the redshirt. She seemed excited about the possibility of redshirting, because it might give her the opportunity to start for two years at center back. The season being over, count Korie as a redshirt.

Megan Rapinoe, of course, already redshirted her freshman year here, so she would have been only a junior this year with Rachael being a senior. So - Rachael will definitely be a RS senior in 2008. And sister Megan will catch up with Rachael, also becoming a RS senior. The one twist in the RS topic, is that Megan technically could apply for a medical RS after her senior season and would I believe be eligible for a fourth year of soccer in a period of time of six years.

Many believe Megan has bigger fish to fry playing on the national team and possibly professionally in the new women's league set to begin in 2009 (at last word), than coming back to UP for a sixth year of college. Bottom line, both options are open to Megan. Bet, however, that next season will be her last, unless she has a difficult year for whatever reason and has lost value in the soccer universe. In that scenario, which I hope never happens to her, she could opt for a sixth year here to bring her value back up to where it is now.

National team commitments: Sophie, of course, is a starter on the Canadian Senior Women's National Team. She should play in the Olympics in China next August. That means she will miss probably all of August pre-season training with the team, and depending on our 2008 schedule, might miss the first game or two, or she may not miss any games. Since she has 15 games under her belt with the Pilots, and gets along incredibly with her teammates, it won't be as bad for her missing training next summer and re-joining the team in progress as it was for her first this year as she was playing her first ever games as a Pilot.

We have several players returning next year as well as new high school recruits who are on U.S. youth national teams. However, I have no knowledge whether there are any tournaments sceduled in conflict with August training or the regular season. Others will fill in those gaps for you.

Good question about Hailee living in Kelsey's shadow. Only Hailee knows the answer to that question. I do know that Garrett believes that Hailee is Kelsey's equal; she is just too green right now, but I'm telling you she'll be blossoming in the next year or so. Hope she stays. She's training under bill Irwin, considered one of the top goalkeeper coaches in the world. I can say with certainty that no one is guaranteed a starting spot on the team. They'll battle in August, and if Hailee is the better keeper, she'll start. Period. Kendra learned that this year.

That's all I can do for now, UPWSRookie. I need to sleeeeppppppppp................

FANatic wrote:I can say with certainty that no one is guaranteed a starting spot on the team.

Well said, Fanatic..."Earn the right to play."

From what I remember from some of the recruiting threads, we should see some freshman defenders coming in next year. That doesn't mean they'll necessarily play on the back line, but there may be some competition with current players for those starting spots that are being vacated by Michaelson, Cronkrite and Lopez.

2008 Pilot Recruits (will be freshmen next season): I believe we know of five, and Geezer says there will be a sixth. (Others like Geezer and Stonehouse should have a better feeling for how they might fit in.)

1) Halley Kreminski - Midfielder is reputed to be best player in Idaho this year. Don't know much about her. (Anyone can Google these names. I simply haven't the time or energy right now.)

2) Charney Burk - California attacking midfieder. One of our top recruits. Great get by the program. She previously has played on the U-16 youth national team and is currently listed on the U-17 roster. Probable first year starter. I am guessing she will play outside mid if Megan is at the AMF spot for one last season. Then, I believe she is seen as Wozzie's replacement. Insiders compare her to Tiffany Milbrett. Top flight recruit should play lots of minutes her freshman year with the potential to take over the team after Megan is through. (Conjecture on my part).

3) Danielle Foxhoven - Attacking mid/striker from Colorado. Another top flight recruit who has played on youth national teams with Elli Reed. Parade All-American as high school junior. Two time Player of the Year in Colorado as a sophomore and junior. Like Charney Burk, she will find minutes her freshman year. She is too good not to play. Getting top flight recruits like Danielle and Charney just might address our need for more quality depth.

*****A relative just arrived at my front door from back East. I will talk about recruits 4 and 5 hopefully later this evening.

I'm imagining a team with Enyeart and Rachael (and/or Chandhoke) up front, Schmidt, Megan, and Reed in the middle w/ Winters behind them, and Tsao, Olivier, Nicholson, and Sweeney in back, with Kelsey in goal. If any of the other freshmen can beat out this group, more power to 'em.

Oooohhh! Nice line-up, harryb. That's not only a good group, but leaves plenty of quality depth coming off the bench.

Just a question or two: (1) Do you have Megan as your AMF? That leaves Sophie on the left wing in Budge's spot. Is that the best place for her? Is she fast enough streaking down the sideline?

(2) Starting Olivier at center back, (a good possibility, by the way), assumes she beats out veterans Kristen Kelly, Sara Jackman and 2008 recruit Kassandra McCluskie. Olivier should be a tremendous center back. And I would give her a very good chance to start, if not in the first game of the season, then later in the season after she gets some college-level experience. But I can say the Pilots brain trust has not predestined this. Every position is up for grabs. As always. (Garrett just lets the players compete in August for the eleven starting spots, and he will go with the eleven best players he sees at that time, regardless of reputation or previous experience.)

Sorry for rambling on, harryb. Yours is one heckuva line-up and just might be right on!!! (Again, it leaves us with great quality depth off the bench, and we do need to continue to address that. We are also due for a season free of injuries to key players and national team call-ups!)

Continuing my post from last night, we have two other verbal commits to mention:

4) Michelle Olivier - Center back from Georgia. First recruit from the deep South, I believe, for the Pilots. One of the most highly sought after center backs in the nation, the 5'9" Olivier should replace Emily's size and ability with her sheer natural talent. This is a big-time get for the program. She is on the U-17 youth national team and will bring instant credibility to the pitch. If she doesn't start right out of the box, she should get plenty of minutes in her freshman season.

5) Kassandra McCluskie - Midfielder/defender from Arizona. Can play all five defensive positions. (Holding mid, center back, outside back). Versatile player like Sara Jackman and Keelin Winters. Don't know too much about Kassi except that she is supposed to be a 'Kari Evans' type player. Should be fun to watch 'cause I love Kari's game and heart!

Geezer says there is a sixth recruit that we haven't discovered yet. If anyone has any clues to the mysterious Ms. X, or wishes to add something to the five recruits I have described on this thread thus far, please do!

All of your lineups have Megan In the middle.

I thought Garrett was quoted as saying he doubted that Megan would return next year. Did he mean the year after?

I'm confused.

Well, I wonder if someone could elighten me on how exactly it is that we know these recruits are coming? I cannot find anything on Google about public declarations save for Kassandra McCluskie and Halley Kremenski, I think. I do not doubt the accuracy of the comments . . .just wondering as to the source? BTW, shouldn't SoccerBuzz begin putting up these names sometime in December?

I am pretty sure that Smith's comment about Rapinoe concerned her not coming back after her senior year--in other words, that she would be here next year but was not seeking a medical resdshirt year in addition to the redshirt year she already took.

FANatic, you raise some good questions. An alternate defense, if we don't want to start freshmen (right away) might be Keelin Winters at central defense with Korie, and have Sara Jackman as holding mid. I don't know enough about Kristen Kelly to guess where she might fit. A good midfield might have Megan and Elli on the wings, and Sophie replacing Wozzie. Of course it's all speculation. Garrett will play whoever's best in August. But trying to guess is half the fun.

Well, I wonder if someone could elighten me on how exactly it is that we know these recruits are coming? I cannot find anything on Google about public declarations save for Kassandra McCluskie and Halley Kremenski, I think. I do not doubt the accuracy of the comments . . .just wondering as to the source? BTW, shouldn't SoccerBuzz begin putting up these names sometime in December?

well, They all have been on the web. some in picture, some in articles.

I didn't bookmark them all, but here, for instance, is how we found out about Kreminski
http://www.idahostatesman.com/highschoolsports/story/186881.html

So far it's been 5 for 2008 and 3 for 2009 that have been found.

ya gotta look.

Ah, I have looked and I can detect no public indications of commitments other than as I indicated. Your response might be more meaningful if it had basis in fact--there do not appear to be public declarations regarding Burk, Foxhoven, nor Oliver.

wrv,

you may have trouble finding them because you aren't looking in the right places. Some sites don't come up on google right away because they have little traffic or you need to subscribe to the site. Or you might not be asking te right questions of the search engine.

Here's a site Google just gave me when I typed in Olivier Portland:



rise magazine

seems pretty clear....

Oh, and don't use Buzz magazine as your guiding source. they didn't have the 2007 recruits up until a month after they were declared on Portlandpilots.com

Thanks. By my standards that is pretty clear. You are a resource Geezer. I have indeed looked but to no avail other than as indicated with regard to McCluskie and Kreminski.

After doing this a bit, (it's kinda fun, really) I've come up with some guidelines of places to look. at some point, I may do a guide to recruit sleuthing, but the principles are pretty straitforward,

1) find soccer related sites to search individually. These would be : recruiting sites, club sites, home town newspapers, high school papers on line, etc. There are websites where players put up their bio's for coaches. If you have a coaching license, Bingo! Facebook might work, but if you look like my avatar, you probably won't link up with anyone. ergo, I don't use it. include clubs where we have previously garnered recruits. It probably means we have a pipeline.

2) be looking for specific players. If you don't know where to start, consider that almost every recruit recently has been ODP and/or YNT.
get lists off those sites and start searching. most recruits lately have been in the West region, so you may want to limit your choices. (that would have gotten you 3 out of 5 for 2008)

2b) ask around--talk. if some guy in the stands says he heard that there's a great recruit from, say, Idaho, target every decent player in the state. ( I picked Idaho as an example for a reason). It gets in the paper that Lisa went to Chicago-Boom- 4 ODP players go on the list.


3) find keywords that work (trial and error) Although the two keywords above worked, usually a name and "Portland" isn't very productive because almost every good player comes through the Nike invitationals here. "University of Portland" (with the quotes) works better, but can be too restrictive if used by itself. certain players may need special attention. If, for example, you search on Michelle Olivier, you'll get lots of nice photos of a french woman in a bikini. Nice to look at, but not helpful for recruiting. Taylor Brooke is apparently a stripper and a New York State winery, so you might need to limit more there, too. If you include "soccer" then the stripper gets weeded out until she starts using a soccer ball in her act. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure there's only one Courtney Verloo. Some crawlers treat "courtney verloo" and "Verloo, Courtney" the same. Others don't. find out what your crawler does and allow for it. Include knicknames. get the names right. Is it Nayola or Noyola? I've seen both on this site, one is useless. Same for Halley, Hailie, Hailee, Hally, Chloe, Cloee, Elly, Ellie, Teresa, Tereza, etc. Sometimes a player will use a formal name for the YNT, but her high school only uses her knickname. You need to know that Mary Constance Smith is Mary Smith on the YNT, but Connie to her classmates.

4) consider a web crawler. I wrote one as a programming challenge to learn PERL, but you could try one of the ready made ones like Google Alerts. web crawlers keep searching sites and only report to you if there is new info, so Google Alerts will bombard you with sites to check for the first day or two, then only report new info you haven't checked. I find It only takes a couple minutes a day to keep up.

5) stay organized and delete players who have commited elsewhere from the searches. Then keep track of who you deleted so you don't just add them in from the next list you see. If you don't, you'll be swamped with names and your crawler will keep you busier than if you just looked around sites willy-nilly. If you believe the rise Magazine site from a couple of posts ago, everyone but Teresa Noyola gets deleted.

6) understand that lots of recruiting information is transitory. Recruiting websites update regularly, newspapers take things off the search engines and make archive materials available only to subscribers after a period of time. Ditto club sites. If I report that I found someone is coming to UP and you ask for documentation 2 months later, I may not be able to provide it. Usually, I'll cite the source if I can when I first report, but sometimes that will be private and only available to subscribers or members. Olivier is a good example. There was stuff available earlier that's gone now. Once she committed, there was no need to keep it on some sites. also, Once I establish to my satisfaction I have the facts right, I delete the player from searches so I limit what I have to check.

7) My hope was to provide this type of information for all UP sports,But so far all I've done is women's soccer. There are still lots of opportunities for others of you to stake a claim to another UP sport. I say go for it. If you do exactly what I did, we'll just come up with the same info. Better to do something a little different and benefit us all. Think about where else on the web to get info I haven't mentioned, maybe you'll get lucky.

8 ) become Garrett's new best friend. It's probably a lot less work.

hope that's a start.

wrv - just a follow-up on Geezer's posts regarding finding recruits on the web. Personally, I don't sleuth the web like Geezer and Stonehouse. I don't have near enough mental energy.

To give you some closure on the five recruits I wrote of earlier: I was the first to discover a 2008 recruit last August when I ran into an ex-player. After speaking to her for awhile, I asked her if she had any recruiting news she could share. She told me about Kassandra McCluskie, and that it was public and definite. She was really pumped about "Kassi".

I put the news on this site in my very first post. (Wanted to show off that I knew something about Pilots soccer). Geezer responded that I done good and posted some web links on Kassi for me. The largest topic on the Women's Soccer Forum, (most posts and views), called Recruiting Update, which is still used has most all the info you will need to learn how the rest of the process played out. (Make sure you have some time before you read the thread 'cause it currently has about 54 posts on it. There's also a thread on 2009 recruits. Both threads are on the front page of the Women's Soccer Forum.)

Hope this helps, wrv. PM me if you have other questions on this topic. (I have confirmed personally, through sources close to the process, that the three players you cannot find on Google are definite 2008 Pilots. All three are major national recruits and are going to make a HUGE impact on the program for years to come!)

Adding to speculation about line up next season:

Major factor is Megan R's fitness.

Also if Garrett is looking for experience in the back four he might switch Sophie back there. We don't know that the forward conversion is permanent. If Megan and Rachel are both fit then you have Rachel and Michelle starting up front; Megan at the point of the diamond, Keelin as the holding MF, Elli on one flank, which only leaves one spot in MF. Charney Burk?

Defense could have Sweeney, Tsao, Schmidt and any one from Kelly, Jackman, Nicholson, and the freshmen.

Really all very speculative until we know how many of the Rapinoes and Megan S are able to come back from injury. And then what we see from the freshmen.

If they are as useful as Winters, Reed, and Tsao then we could be pretty darn good by the playoffs.

I don't think the problem will be offense next year. Other than Korie, there isn't a tested central defender I can think of. I think Olivier might fill the bill, but some sites list her as a mid. She's supposed to be pretty exceptional, but where?

One more thing on the search engines, for those interested. Throw in some "wild cards". I have a search going on "soccer AND Portland AND freshman" that just popped this up:


Jeff Griffin's High School

It didn't find a recruit this time, but it's still interesting.

Geezer

I agree; that's why we might see Schmidt back there.

Martin Jol - FYI your earlier post: Megan Sweeney is fit right now and has been scrimmaging with the team for weeks (as has Korie Nicholson). Both were held out of games because they weren't desperately needed, so why blow their redshirts? Sweeney will return as a RS Soph, (and join our great 2007 freshman class), and Korie as a RS Junior, giving her a two year opportunity to start as a central defender.

Korie's gotta work extra hard in the offseason, though, because the competition back there is going to be fierce. I agree Sophie might move back there unless Garrett believes he needs her up top. But depending on the Rapinoes fitness, we could be really loaded on offense next year. I agree with your line-up speculation that has Burk taking over Budgie's left wing spot, but for only one season. Unless Garrett wants Sophie as his attacking mid for the next three years, I believe Charney was brought in to fill Angie's big shoes. A young Tiffany Milbrett, (Burk), sounds awfully good to me at that spot!!!

And don't forget recruit Danielle Foxhoven. Although there are never any guarantees on how recruits will fair in college ball, Danielle should add another big-time offensive threat to the team. Remember Burk, Foxhoven and Olivier all play, (as opposed to sit) on U.S. youth national teams. I believe that implies some pretty big league talent!

Depending on need, I think that Tsao could also fill in nicely on a wing. We potentially have some many nice "problems" next season.

Hey everyone... I'm finally back from Boston!

My two cents here - I'm guessing that Enyeart and R Rapinoe up front make the most sense, with M Rapinoe and Schmidt in the middle. Reed definitely has one of the outside mid spots locked down, but I'm thinking that Jessica might make sense for the other one. She's done a great job filling in on the back line, but I'd love to take advantage of some of her natural attacking abilities.

I'm thinking that Winters can slide back to take Emily's spot. Sweeney will hold down one of the marking back spots, and from there, it's a crap shoot between Jackman/Nicholson/incoming freshman.

Of course, there is nothing guaranteed about anything. I mean, who would have predicted before this season that Winters would be a freshman of the year candidate? Or that Tsao would do such a great job on the back line? And the year before that... who knew Sweeney would step in as a freshman and perform so well? So I am guessing that with such a large and talented freshman group coming in, at least one of them will force her way into the lineup somewhere.

Either way, it's exciting to think about, and there can be no doubt that the coaches have done a great job of brining in big-time talent to help replace one of the best senior classes UP has ever seen.

Hey Stoney--Did you have a 'gansett for us?

Yeah, it looks to me like Garrett has some serious problems---deciding who'se going to have to sit.....


Nice problem to have.

Based on the skillset that we have returning/coming in, anyone see us changing formations up a bit? Perhaps a move from 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1

Which would allow something like this

Enyeart/ R. Rapinoe


R.Rapinoe/Burke M. Rapinoe Reed

Schmidt/Jackman Winters

Sweeney Corie/Olivier Kelley/Frosh? Tsao



I dunno, just thinking abstractly about how we can maximize our offense, while still protecting a young defense.