BATON ROUGE – LSU head coach Brian Lee and seniors Alex Arlitt, Natalia Gomez-Junco and Heather Magee met with members of the media on Monday afternoon to discuss preseason training and preview the 2015 season as part of their annual LSU Soccer & Volleyball Media Day held in the fifth-floor press conference room at the Athletic Administration Building.
The Tigers are just four days from the start of the start of the 2015 season as they travel to Eugene, Oregon, to face the Oregon Ducks on Friday night in a match that is set to kick off at 9 p.m. CT. The match will be aired live on the Pac-12 Network in the network’s first live event broadcast of the 2015-16 athletic season in the Pac-12 Conference.
Below are selected quotes from those in attendance in Monday’s LSU Soccer & Volleyball Media Day, while video interviews with Lee and his Tigers will also be available to view shortly on LSUsports.net.
Comments from the 2015 LSU Soccer & Volleyball Media Day
Head Coach Brian Lee
Opening Statement …
“It’s always very exciting to be a fall sport. We feel blessed to coincide with football and get started in August. You get students coming back to campus and all the hub-bub around football getting cranked up. We’re lucky to be a fall sport and fall under that umbrella and feed off the excitement in Baton Rouge and the excitement here on campus. Yesterday at Fan Day, there were probably lines of 100, 200 people at times for the volleyball and soccer teams to get autographs. That’s a really special and unique event for our players and our student-athletes to get a chance to be a part of. Here in Baton Rouge and the entire state of Louisiana, when we hit fall sports, the excitement that our kids feel and our entire staff and coaches get to experience is really special and it’s very unique to us here at LSU, so we’re excited about the fall.
“Toward that end with soccer, we probably go from being one of the youngest teams in the SEC and the country to quite possibly the oldest team in the SEC and maybe the country. We’re leaning on a nine-person senior class. Last fall, we had a zero-person senior class. We have nine seniors, five of whom are fifth-year seniors, and they’ve done a great job over the last nine months of working on themselves, setting the culture and the tone for the team and providing great leadership day-to-day. Some of them will be starters, potential All-American, All-SEC-type players, and some of them might not play a combined 100 minutes during the year, but they’re all serving a really functional role for our team on a daily basis that we’re excited about.
“We open our season this Friday. College soccer is a little different; you get a two-week preseason for a sport where some of the players are going to run seven miles on Friday nights, so we get two weeks to prep for that. We open up with a trip to Oregon. One thing we try to do is play a really competitive game out of the gate that we can eyeball for those nine months of our offseason. Certainly if LSU and Oregon play a game in any sport, it’s exciting and we’re looking forward to our trip out there. Our non-conference schedule, we have eight games and five of them are against top programs in the country and then a couple of mid-levels who will certainly give us a test and are going to be threats to win their conference. Our home slate includes Duke, Marquette, Indiana and Minnesota. Those are games I hope our fans can come out to. We’ve got two tournaments the second and third week of the season, so we’re hoping to create some buzz on campus and get students out. Marketing is doing a great job with it. (We need to) get our Baton Rouge soccer community behind us and get a couple of wins in the bank and create the kind of atmosphere that makes it a very difficult place to play. We’re excited about the fall.”
On comparing team chemistry this year on and off the field as compared to last year’s team …
“I think we’re moons ahead of last year, and it really started with the final whistle of 2014. It wasn’t a season we expected. It wasn’t a season that lived up to our own standards, and from the day after the season, it’s something the returnees and coaches have thought about daily and gone about business of putting our heads down and really grinding out a day-to-day work hard mentality and a toughness, worrying about things that we can control and not the things we can’t. Over the course of time, there is a lot of sweat, work, culture and team building for the older kids and the staff. We certainly have become a lot closer and more comfortable with each other, and then we just parlayed that into the fall. There was a much bigger comfort from having an experience, veteran team starting the season. In terms of acclimating the new kids, that made that process a lot easier. Instead of coaches and players, we had a group of 20, 22 strong influencing those five kids in the exact same way, so it’s made life much easier for our new players as well.”
On the season opener in Oregon and what the team is expecting …
“Well the season is always full of optimism. We had a scrimmage game last week that helped us where we played Southern Miss in Orange Beach. One of the reasons we went to Orange Beach is it’s the site of the SEC Tournament, so let’s go down there and get comfortable with the environment and play a game exactly where we want to finish this season in games that really matter. That was a very helpful 90 minutes for us. Southern Miss is a good opponent, and it pointed out some of our strengths and weaknesses. We’re working on those this week, and in terms of going up to Oregon, you’re going to find big strong athletes and another program who recruits well, and they’re certainly going to be a tough opponent. One of the unique things about Oregon is that they play on artificial turf, but the new artificial turfs are every bit as good as grass, and the ball bounces almost identically. At big football playing universities, the head coach of the football program has a lot to do with how the rest of us are able to operate. This week Coach (Les) Miles is in preseason, but we carved out some time to go play on turf that is going to be very similar to Oregon’s turf. From a soccer playing side of it, we should be much more comfortable against them than a normal team might be. We’re going to play a lot of upperclassmen that have been through the ringers. I don’t think it’ll feel like a normal season opener because the team we put on the field will be so much more experienced than they normally would be, but we’re excited about it, and we can’t wait to go represent LSU and put on our purple jerseys and let them put on their green jerseys and play 90 minutes, and we’ll see who wins.”
Senior Defender Alex Arlitt
On her leadership role this season …
“Last year, I was more of a leader by example. So last year versus this year, I am really demanding myself to step up and be vocal. It’s been a big change for me. It’s definitely a necessary part of the game. I think that with that and encouraging the other seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen to do that too really takes our game up several notches.”
On the excitement going into this season …
“I could not be any more excited. I’ve been looking forward to this for a year. There has literally not been a single day that I haven’t thought about it and haven’t been in touch with my teammates. That’s really what we’re looking for. I could not be more excited.”
On the team’s chemistry going into the season …
“I feel like it’s a total 180 (degree) turn. Last year, I don’t think we were nearly as fit as we wanted to be with a young team. I don’t think we were very focused. I don’t think we had a lot of leadership on the field. So, that was kind of a wake-up call. Going into the offseason we really focused on just holding each other accountable.”
Senior Midfielder Natalia Gomez-Junco
On what it means to have nine seniors on this year’s team …
“Of course it helps a lot to have nine people that not only are all seniors, but each one of use is fully committed. We all know what it takes to play at this level. I think that’s the important part. We all help lead the team.”
On the culture change this season …
“We are all just more focused. We are all more committed. We are all aiming toward one objective. We all know what it is. It is pretty clear to all of us. We all help transmit that to the younger players and make them buy in as quick as they can.”
Senior Midfielder Heather Magee
On the development of the team this preseason …
“During practice we talked a lot about holding each other accountable. If we see anything on or off the field, it doesn’t have to be something we criticize, but we may say ‘Hey, next time do this,’ or ‘Hey, watch out for this.’ Even befriending some of the younger players and get them all on board.”
On Jorian Baucom‘s development …
“She has been into the (U.S. Under-20 Women’s) National Team a few times here over the summer and spring season. I think she has learned a lot there. So, coming back she’s just taking what she’s learned there. She talked about how she wanted to be better at defending when she was up front. She’s attacking and defending. She’s a new player now, it seems like.”