BATON ROUGE – LSU head coach Brian Lee, senior goalkeeper Megan Kinneman and senior midfielder Alex Ramsey met with members of the media on Tuesday afternoon to preview the 2013 season as part of the annual LSU Soccer & Volleyball Media Day held in the media room at the LSU Basketball Practice Facility.
The Tigers are just three days from the start of the 2013 season as they welcome Louisiana Tech to Baton Rouge on Friday for a match set to kick off at 7 p.m. CT at the LSU Soccer Stadium. They are coming off a strong 4-1 victory over Nicholls State in their preseason exhibition held on Friday of last week also at the LSU Soccer Stadium.
Comments from the 2013 LSU Soccer Media Day
Head Coach Brian Lee
Opening Statement …
“There’s this buzz that comes from playing in the same season as the football team. Our kids can feel it and our coaches can feel it, so we’re very excited about Friday night and our opener against Louisiana Tech. Preseason has gone well. We showed up fit, which is our No. 1 requirement to a successful season. We’re talented. We’re a bit young, and now we are just waiting to see how our leadership develops as kind of the final piece to how well we do and if we’ll have a championship team. Our schedule gets going on Friday night against Louisiana Tech. We’ve got a great non-conference schedule that will fill two goals for us. No. 1, get us ready for the SEC season, but No. 2, gives us an opportunity to build an RPI for the NCAA Tournament and have a couple wins in the non-conference that will help us come that time of year. The SEC has grown immensely in the last five or six years in soccer. We’ll have the best group of teams that we’ve had since I’ve been here. Last year I want to say we had 13 of the 14 teams in the top 100 (of the RPI). On paper, everybody continues to get better. We feel like we will be right in the mix. Somewhere in the top portion of the conference, if our leadership comes through and we stay healthy and our chemistry within our team is good. We continue the process of getting better through the non-conference teams and kind of build into the SEC season. We think we’ve got a chance to have a championship team, and push on from there. Our normal Friday nights out at the soccer complex are fantastic. This Friday, we kick of our kids clinic series, which when we’ve done it in the past has been really successful. About 45 minutes before kickoff, you can come out and train a little bit with some of our staff and players. So we invite everybody out to that. Last two preseason home openers, we’ve had 2,500-plus out at the soccer complex, so we are expecting another crowd like that this Friday night, so we’ll get it kicked off and get going.”
On who the team will count on to score goals this year …
“Well, we’ve got a talented group of freshmen up front, but they are freshmen. Summer Clarke comes to us as one of the most highly recruited kids in the country. I’ve rated her for the last couple of years as competitive to be the top youth forward in the world, so we’re expecting her to help us quite a bit. Fernanda Pina, who is a sophomore for us, has really improved over the last year. She was our leading scorer last season, but she came back this year in much better shape. Just with that year of experience, she went from the bottom of our fitness charts to the top of our fitness charts, so I think that will manifest in the games. And then we’ve moved Jodi Calloway up front too, who is a strong target player for us, whose job it will be to hold the ball up and then turn and get in front of goal. So it could be any of those three. Coming out of midfield, another top freshman, Emma Fletcher, from the west coast of Canada, she’s as creative and full of flare type player as we’ve ever had. So the games will kick off Friday. We’ll see who and where they come from. What we do know is we’ll play an attractive, flowing, fun to watch style of soccer. And for the kids, it’s fun to play. For the coaches, it’s fun to coach. We had a little scrimmage against Nicholls on Friday night, and leaving the field, I think we all felt like that’s as enjoyable of a game experience that we’ve had as a group probably since 2008 and 2009 when we had a real high-powered attacking team. So I’d encourage you to come watch. For the people who made it to the scrimmage, which wasn’t closed door but was a pretty quiet event, I think they left thinking that’s a pretty good team and enjoyable to watch.”
On senior goalkeeper Megan Kinneman …
“I love Megan Kinneman, that’s what we can start with. What a wonderful kid who is as hard a worker and as quality a goalkeeper as there is in the SEC. We’re hoping for big things for her this year. I know the quality of her play is going to be outstanding. It’s just a matter of how many goals do we allow if she gets the kind of individual attention that I would think she deserves, and that’s up to the whole team to defend together. But in terms of leadership, personality, ability, work ethic, she is everything you’d ever want in a player. I also think post-graduation, she’s going to be a pro and then she’s going to be a highly successful coach herself, if she chooses that route.”
On hosting BYU in Baton Rouge on Sept. 2 …
“We’ve had a nice little history with BYU. They are a lot like us. They are a perennial Top 40 team when they hit it right, like last year, they were a Top 8 team in the country. They were a speck away from reaching the Final Four, lost in overtime to the eventual national champ. They are a great soccer program with an excellent coach who repeat the same things year after year and they are really successful at it. Why you see them on our schedule and us on theirs is both of us have a lot of trouble finding non-conference opponents who want to come to Provo, Utah, or want to go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, because both of us have a great home field advantage. So when we return the game, they’ll have 3,000 people in the stands and it will be a lot of fun for our student-athletes. When they come here, we’ll have probably 2,000 and they’ll leave thinking ‘man that was awesome,’ win, lose or draw.”
On if there is any worry relying on so many freshmen on this year’s team …
“Well, I wouldn’t say angst going into their first game, I would say there is certainly a different developmental cycle for every freshman as an individual over the course of the first year. I think out of the gate, they are going to be good, and they are going to pass and move and do what they do. The moment certainly isn’t going to overwhelm them. These are kids who have played in multiple youth World Cups and represented their country and been on TV plenty, all of that kind of stuff. But the college season is a grind. For soccer, we have a two-week preseason, which is too short. Then we play 20 games in 65 days, which is way too many games in way too short a time. If your body is not ready physically or if you are not ready mentally and emotionally to focus game-by-game, that can be an issue in your overall performance. It’s one of the reasons you see such a different game between our freshmen and our sophomores. It’s just getting familiar with the program and then getting a year in our strength and conditioning program with Ryan Filo, who works under Tommy Moffitt, which we’re the best in the country at that. So that’ll be the indicator of how successful they are. What I know is they are as talented as anybody in the country, for the four of them. Rebecca (Pongetti) at center back will step in and play right away. If we’re picking a recruit from across the country, we’d like it to be Rebecca at center back. Megan Lee, who turned her ankle on Friday night, will be out about a month. She turned her ankle in our exhibition. She’s our New Zealand girl. She’s as good a left back as there is in the country, and she’s one of the best forwards I’ve ever coached, we just need her to play left back right now. And then Emma (Fletcher) and Summer (Clarke), who I already talked about. Those are top-class, mature players. But that college soccer environment and just having to be prepared game after game after game that comes so quickly. And we are a physical sport, when we track our kids. Friday night, Heather Magee, who plays center mid for us, she ran almost 11,000 meters. On a normal schedule, we’ve got a game two days later after she ran 11,000 meters. So it’s not a perfect environment, but it’s how they deal with that emotionally and physically, and then on the field in terms of production. But we’ve got a lot of confidence in them and we certainly like them a lot.”
On the LSU Soccer Stadium…
“If people haven’t been there in a few years, we used to have a great home environment that was entirely based on the fans making it a home environment, where we just had bleachers and the fans were right on top of the field, so we had that kind of feel to it. But now we’ve got one of the nicest stadiums in the country. It’s one of the big reasons we have more elite recruits coming onto the team, because we are showing the athletic department’s support of the program. They can see it on a Tuesday, ‘hey that stadium looks pretty nice.’ It’s always been awesome on a Friday when you bring your family out and you are that close to the action and there is a practice field where you can run around with your kids and they can get a little exercise while the girls are playing. But for people who haven’t been out yet, if you’ll give it a try, especially those Friday night matches, it’s something that people always come back to.”
On the formation of the new SEC Network …
“I think it’s going to be huge for all of the Olympic sports. We don’t know any details yet, but the broad picture is a whole lot more games on TV. It might create some travel issues for the teams across the SEC, because we might play on some awkward nights, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, when it finally surfaces. I’m hoping the added benefit is the scheduling quirk that we talked about before, just from a pure coaching perspective. On Friday/Sunday, the Sunday game isn’t the quality of the Friday game. So maybe we will get a little boost by playing on Tuesday/Saturday or Tuesday/Sunday. We’ll get more rest in between our games. But in terms of the exposure it will provide, for our kids we are recruiting across the world to be able to click on whatever SEC Network it is and see us, that’s going to be huge for them.”
Senior Goalkeeper Megan Kinneman
On the incoming freshmen …
“They are already jumping right in. They are super competitive and doing really well with us. I do not think any of us have doubts about how they are going to join in with the rest of the team.”
On what she is looking forward to the most this season …
“I am really just looking forward to playing with this group of players. We have gone through a lot. The senior class, and every class, has worked really hard during this offseason. We have come together even more this year. I have seen bits and pieces my last three years and I think this year we have it all. This is a really special team.”
On her improvement during the off season …
“I really just jumped in with the program. As I have been here at LSU, I have realized if you put 100 percent into everything you do, all of the opportunities are here for you. This is whether it is on the field, off the field, in the weight room, everything. If you put 100 percent into it you are going to improve. You really have to buy into the program.”
Senior Midfielder Alex Ramsey
On the incoming freshmen …
“I do not think there is any kind of hierarchy on our team as far as seniors to freshman go. We are all together as one team. This is something very unique about our team. They come onto the field as if they have been here for four years. The freshmen add this flare to the team and it is really exciting.”
On her senior season …
“I’m excited. I think that this is the most prepared I have felt, especially since it is my senior season. I am now back in center mid, which I feel the most comfortable with. I had to take on left back and right back positions freshman and sophomore year, but I definitely feel the most comfortable at center mid because that is where I have played my whole life. I feel like I am gradually becoming a better leader on the team. This is something I have worked on the past four years.”