Editor’s note: Longtime Baton Rouge sportswriter, author and television host Lee Feinswog takes his unique approach to sports to dig deeper into LSU Athletics. Look for these features online and in official athletics department publications throughout the 2014-15 season.
The LSU soccer team has been home this season, but after more than three weeks on the road, sophomore Emma Fletcher summed it up pretty well.
“Traveling is always annoying,” the Canadian midfielder said matter-of-factly. “It’s a drag and I feel like it affects us. We’re always so tired and it’s also annoying having to do homework on the road. Having a weekend at home and being able to see a football game and stuff is going to be good for us.”
It’s the “stuff,” of course, that matters most. The Tigers, 4-5-1 overall and 0-1 in the Southeastern Conference, play host to 10th-ranked Texas A&M on Friday night and then Arkansas on Sunday.
Because they lost at Missouri last Friday as part of a really tough road swing, LSU is really up against it so early in the season.
What seems like now as way back in August, LSU opened at home by beating Troy and Northwestern State before losing to Rice. The homestand continued on September with a victory over Nicholls.
But that was a lot of miles ago.
They lost at TCU, tied Stephen F. Austin 0-0 in two overtimes, won at BYU, but lost at Duke and then to Missouri and Marquette.
“We’ve been up and down. We’ve had some really big wins and then we lost some games we could have won,” Fletcher said. “We’ve learned that we have to be more consistent if we want to make the NCAA Tournament.”
So this is a pivotal time.
“The Missouri game was a real shock to the young kids’ systems,” 10th-year head coach Brian Lee said of the 3-1 defeat. “Like, wait a second, I didn’t think they’d be throwing elbows and coming in that hard. They’d really never seen anything like that so it was a shock to them and their youth culture.”
If nothing else, LSU is young – the roster is sprinkled with eight freshmen and six sophomores – and Lee is hoping the tough early-season schedule will pay dividends.
“To go to Marquette and to go to Duke and go to BYU and compete like that,” Lee said, “starting five or six freshman and playing eight to nine to 10 freshmen and sophomores on the field at the same time is really encouraging.”
Dealing with the rigors of the season is a concern. Fletcher, for one, played in the Under-20 World Cup for Canada and admits that she got back to LSU banged up and is having to work through it.
“I’ve been playing a really long time and mentally it’s getting to me a little bit,” said Fletcher, the product of Victoria, British Columbia, who has a goal and an assist this season.
The team’s only senior, midfielder Alex Arlitt, has been battling an ankle injury and Lee said she might shut it down for the season while it’s still early enough to get a redshirt.
Another Canadian sophomore, Summer Clarke, thinks the first 10 games have put LSU is a good spot.
“Even though we’ve lost five games, we’ve learned something from every single game,” said Clarke, a forward from the Vancouver suburb of Richmond.
Clark, along with Arizona freshman Jorian Baucom, leads the team with five goals scored. They’ve each notched two assists.
“If anything our team has gotten better and learned not to make the same mistakes again,” Clarke said.
Said her coach, “We feel good about where the team is.”
Which is no small thing for a squad with a freshman goalkeeper, New Zealander Lily Alfed, and two freshmen anchoring the middle, Jordane Carvery from Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, and Alexis Urch, from Round Rock, Texas.
“You never want to be reliant on freshmen, but their improvement has been wonderful,” Lee said.
No wonder he says, “We’re talented and young and if Arlitt redshirts, the entire team is basically back.”
Playing A&M is always tough. The 7 p.m. match set for the SEC Network+ and if history holds, it will be a one-goal game either way. Of course, there’s stuff the next night in the form of LSU playing host to New Mexico State in football. And Sunday Arkansas comes to LSU for more SEC soccer.
“To go from Utah to North Carolina to Missouri to Wisconsin, that’s quite a trek,” Lee said. “But we’re happy to come home and play a team we have a whole lot of respect for in A&M. It’s an exciting way to come back home.”
The goal, as Fletcher said, is to make the NCAA Tournament.
“We have to win our next games,” Fletcher said. “We have to win a lot of them. We have a lot of teams in our conference with a high RPI and we have to beat them to help ours and get us to the NCAA Tournament.”