Cal Fall Women's Olympics Sports: Field Hockey, Volleyball rebound; W. Soccer falls short of tourney

Cal Field Hockey will play their NCAA 1st-round match vs. Miami (Ohio) at noon PT on Wednesday

Welcome to part 1 of my long-overdue Cal Olympic Sports update for this fall. This edition will focus only on the women’s programs and the post tomorrow (Thursday) will cover the men’s programs.

Cal Field Hockey returns to the NCAA Tournament

In case you missed it, Cal Field Hockey won their first America East title in their last season in the America East (Cal and the rest of the West Coast Field Hockey schools joined back in 2015).

Since now X (formerly Twitter) requires users to have an account to view content, Cal fans may find the America East championship final highlight in the embedded YouTube video below. Golden Bears came from behind to beat the University of Albany by a 3-2 score in sudden death OT.

Unfortunately, the post-match interviews can only be viewed via the link below. Most Outstanding Player, graduate student Daniella Rhodes, and head coach Shellie Onstead talked about the win. The highlight (and spoiler alert) is clearly the team interrupting Onstead's interview with the "Bear Territory" chant.

https://twitter.com/AmericaEast/status/1721329047169609858

Winning the America East automatic bid meant a return to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 17 years (2006). In the announced NCAA field, Cal (12-7) was one of the four lowest-seeded teams and scheduled for a rematch against Miami (Ohio) (14-7) on Wednesday at noon PT from Northwestern. The winner will take on 2nd-seed Northwestern next on Friday. Cal actually opened the season with an 0-2 loss to Miami (Ohio) from Berkeley, but that team is different from the current team, playing much more cohesively after the six graduate transfers and impact freshmen have gelled with the returning players, in the middle of the ongoing 8-game winning streak. During Cal's three-game winning streak in the America East tournament, Golden Bears were able to avenge their regular season losses against Vermont, UMass-Lowell, and Albany.

https://twitter.com/CalAthletics/status/1721579663544520838

It is unclear if Daniella Rhodes, who suffered a thigh injury and missed the second half and OT of the America East final, would be available today [UPDATE: Rhodes is indeed out]. Still, even without their top scorer in Rhodes (19 goals this year), Cal will have several postseason veterans on the squad nonetheless like Bente Baekers (14 goals including the equalizer on Sunday), who is very familiar with that field as a four-year star for Northwestern before graduate transfer to Cal.

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Newcomers on both the court and sideline rejuvenate Cal Volleyball

Cal Volleyball (15-10, 4-10 in the Pac-12) will probably not return to the NCAA tournament in 2023. However, that will not diminish the pleasantly surprising turnaround for a program that has really struggled since the pandemic.

The curious but perhaps planned resignation by previous head coach Sam Crosson just before the season was about to start meant an unusual chance for new coach Crissy Jones Schoonderwoerd to step in as the interim head coach. For a team that also lost their previous best player, Lydia Grote, to the transfer portal (the opposite now plays for perennial powerhouse Minnesota who are kind of struggling in 2023), the expectation was quite low.

Instead, Cal found a new budding superstar in freshman Maggie Li from China. Golden Bears snapped their ridiculously long Pac-12 losing streak that was about two full seasons long. The program took a drastic step back toward national relevance. 

Cal was able to beat solid teams such as USC (see highlight below) and solidly affirm their place as a top-80 team (after being like the 250th-best team for the past three years). In fact, Cal's current RPI of 61 does put them on the NCAA bubble.

Freshman outside hitter Maggie Li, already the winner of five Pac-12 Newcomer of the Week honors, has become that much-needed all-rotation outside hitter that the program had missed for the past few years. The Chinese national leads the team with 3.9 kills per game on a solid 0.229 hitting percentage, even after more than halfway through Pac-12 play. Li also provides 2.47 digs per game.

Stepping up in her senior year is outside hitter Sam Taumoepeau who is second on the team with 3.0 kills per set on 0.173 hitting. Taumoepeau's numbers have dropped since Pac-12 play and her inconsistency is perhaps the best indicator of Cal's win/loss record in those matches. Still, it is great to see a Cal senior having her best season, especially after injuries have cut her previous seasons short.

Setter Annalea Maeder has been quite solid with more weapons to set to in her junior campaign. In addition to Li and Taumoepeau, Maeder got solid middle blocking from sophomore Mikayla Hayden and junior Ellie Hamm. Freshman opposite Ava Mehrten has shown promise if inconsistent. Cal also has another freshman in Ashley Li (no relation to Maggie) who has had some moments of brilliance.

While Cal would need a strong finish to make the tournament (the last six matches include some tough opponents like Oregon and Stanford as well as the road trip to the LA schools), one can see this upcoming offseason as one where the program might finally have a net gain from the transfer portal and make a jump into a borderline top-25 squad in 2024.

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Late season skid costs Cal Women’s Soccer an NCAA tournament berth

Cal Women's Soccer (7-6-6, 4-3-4 in Pac-12) was on the outside looking in when the NCAA tournament field of 64 was announced on Monday. Golden Bears had started their Pac-12 play undefeated (4-0-4) but a tough 0-3 losing streak at the homes of the other California schools (at UCLA, at USC, at Stanford where both UCLA and Stanford are top-10 in RPI) dropped the Bears out of the bubble.

The highlight of the 2023 season was the 8-1 win over Oregon where Cal set a program record for most goals in a Pac-12 match.

Sophomore keeper Teagan Wy, filled in admirably as the new starter after the graduation of Angelina Anderson. Cal also had some big holes to fill after now-sophomore Ayo Oke transferred to UCLA and previous team leader in goals, Keely Roy, graduate transferred to be a supporting player at USC (She went to USC primarily for their graduate journalism program).

Especially after that offensive outburst against Oregon, Cal had a very balanced attack where 13 different Golden Bears had tallied a goal. Ari Manrique and Karli Lema led the team with 5 and 4 goals apiece. 

A little bit of luck, especially in one of those draws against Arizona State or Colorado (who both made the tournament) probably would have been enough to see Cal's season extend beyond this past weekend. It would be curious to see where Cal places in the ACC next year where the top squads are also quite good and deep but the bottom of the conference may be softer.

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Cal Cross Country to race at NCAA West Regional on Friday

Cal women's cross country finished 8th at the Pac-12 championship, a two-place improvement over the previous year. Standout freshman Amelia Wardle-Stacey earned a top-40 finish to lead the Bears.

Cal is ranked 12th in the West Regional, where they will take on five ranked opponents – No. 7 Stanford, No. 8 Washington, No. 12 Oregon, No. 17 Oregon State, and No. 21 California Baptist.

31 teams per gender will be selected for the NCAA Championships. 18 on each side will automatically qualify (two per region, from regional championships) while the remaining 13 for each of the men's and women's championships will be picked at large.

GO BEARS!