The Long Beach State women’s soccer team will take its roster comprised of many new players on its first road trip of the season this weekend for two marquee rematches.
The newly reconfigured ‘Niners will travel to Santa Clara on Thursday to face a team who edged out last year’s 49er squad 1-0 in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.
LBSU’s rematch road trip will conclude with a match at Texas Tech on Sunday. The ‘Niners suffered a 3-2 defeat to the Red Raiders in double overtime in the two teams’ first ever meeting last year.
Head coach Mauricio Ingrassia said that the two road games are not rematches in a traditional sense, considering the main difference between this year’s team and last year’s is the loss of seven seniors who graduated.
“We have a different team now than we did last year, so it helps in terms of having recent video,” Ingrassia said. “We will know what to expect on some level, but obviously our team is new and it’s a different story.”
The Beach opened its season at home last Friday with a surprising 1-0 loss to Northern Arizona, a team that finished with a 5-9-5 record last season.
As the ‘Niners enter the weekend to face two of the toughest opponents they’ll have all season, Ingrassia credited any possible slow start to the season to the lack of a developed team chemistry rather than on-field playing ability.
“We are definitely working on connecting with each other, patience on the ball and tempo,” Ingrassia said. “We need to have better attacking rhythm, that’s for sure.”
Ingrassia said the team has spent a lot of time together in the past three weeks, trying to solidify that team connection he feels is the major element missing at this point. A way to do that, Ingrassia said, is having the team experience challenges together, whether it results in wins or losses.
With Santa Clara losing both its games this season so far, the ‘Niners might be in a better position to leave town with a win than they were nearly 10 months ago.
Santa Clara and Texas Tech opened this season ranked 16th and 24th in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll, respectively. While Texas Tech moved to No. 23 this week, Santa Clara dropped out of the rankings after starting its season 0-2.
Ingrassia said that though his team is improving its chemistry, the 49ers are far from a finished product.
“We’re just getting used to each other on the field more and more,” he said. “It just takes time to build the soccer identity, and it’s not going to happen in three weeks.”
The opening kickoff at Santa Clara’s Buck Shaw Stadium will be Thursday at 7 p.m., and the match against Texas Tech will start at 5 p.m. at John Walker Stadium.