Cal Women's Soccer season kicks off Thursday afternoon
Cal in ACC starts now
The 2024-25 school year is here.
After exhibition matches for Cal Women’s and Men’s Soccer, the season officially kicks off this afternoon when Cal Women’s Soccer hosts UCSD at Edwards Stadium at 4 PM PT. A live stream can be found on something called ACCNX1.
Golden Bears will then make a short trip down to Santa Clara to face the No.22 Broncos on Sunday at 1 PM PT (this game is on ESPN+).
2023 Season in Review:
Cal Women’s Soccer had a relatively successful 2023 season when they went 7-6-6, 4-3-4 in the final year of Pac-12 play. Bears were very good at home with a 5-1-4 record. Unfortunately, the season ended on a bit of a sour note. Cal needed a win in one of their final three matches, all road games against the in-state Pac-12 rivals. Bears could not pull off a much-needed road upset at No.2 UCLA (0-2), at No.23 USC (0-2), nor at No.3 Stanford (0-4); in the end, Cal was left out of the NCAA postseason field of 64.
Offensively, Cal scored 29 goals in 19 matches with a relatively balanced attack. Seven Golden Bears tallied more than one goal on the season led by five from Ari Manrique and four from Karlie Lema.
Defensively, sophomore Teagan Wy was solid in her first year as the starting goalkeeper, taking over the role seamlessly from the graduated Angelina Anderson (now with Angel City FC in the NWSL). Wy earned All-Pac-12 third-team honor and registered 86 saves on the year, 2nd best in the Pac. Both Cal women’s and men’s soccer have had a strong recent tradition of producing great goalkeepers. Wy is the latest in a long line of goalkeepers who will surely be playing professional soccer after Cal.
Who is Back?
Ari Manrique and Karlie Lema are both back for their senior season. Golden Bears also got Skylar Briggs (1450 minutes, 5th highest), Mya Daily (1521 minutes, 4th highest), and Mia Fontana (3 goals) back for their 5th, 5th, and 6th season, respectively.
Playing in front of Teagan Wy, Cal should have an experienced back line with senior Courtney Boone (1626 minutes, 2nd highest on the team) and sophomore Miriam Hils (1209 minutes, 6th highest on the team) back to go with Daily and Briggs.
One would expect a solid, competitive season from such a veteran team.
Who is New?
Last year, Cal’s top player by minutes was defender Kylie Kerr, a graduate transfer from UCLA. In 2024, the transfer portal is now a big part of every offseason and likely to make more impact than the freshmen class.
This year, Cal added three transfers: graduate transfer midfielder Julia Leontini (from Stanford), graduate transfer backup goalkeeper Kelly McManus (UCLA), and junior midfielder Alex Klos (Santa Clara).
As for the freshmen class, midfielder Campbell Carroll has a famous last name due to her brother Corbin Carroll, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year winner for the Arizona Diamondbacks in Major League Baseball. Forward Kenley Whittaker may emerge as another scoring option. Midfielder Victoria Jones and Goalkeeper Sophia Keel round out the class.
U20 FIFA Women’s World Cup (Aug 31 - Sept 22)
Cal will have two players away for the U20 Women’s World Cup. Starting goalkeeper Teagan Wy is named to the squad for Team USA. She spent the summer in the US U20 WOmen’s National Team International Training Camp in Colombia and should be the starter for the U20 USWNT.
https://x.com/CalWSoc/status/1823880250092347650
Defender Miriam Hils for Germany was also called up for international duty.
Golden Bears will have to endure missing these two key players for multiple games. This is perhaps why Cal got an experienced backup keeper from the portal.
ACC Women’s Soccer
The 2023 College Cup (AKA the NCAA Women’s Soccer’s Final Four) saw three teams in the current ACC with Clemson, NCAA runner-up Stanford, and NCAA champ Florida State. In 2022, Cal’s old Pac-12 rival UCLA won the title over Cal’s now ACC rival North Carolina. Another ACC team in Virginia made the College Cup as recently as 2020.
The Pac-12 was a pretty tough conference last year but things are not any easier in the ACC, especially with Stanford also making the switch.
North Carolina’s long-time head coach Anson Dorrance made news when he said that he wanted “Cal and Stanford to die on the vine” rather than joining the ACC to make his life harder. The full clip is below (where he praised Cal and Stanford before making that headline-grabbing comment).
Anson Dorrance announced on Monday that he is retiring. Dorrance had led UNC to 21 national titles when North Carolina dominated the sports in the 80s and 90s with stars like Mia Hamm. He said that the decision to retire has nothing to do with the changing landscape.
Cal Bears will make two cross-country trips for ACC play: September 19th and 22nd at NC State and Wake Forest, then October 17th and 20th at preseason No.15 Notre Dame and Louisville. Cal will host preseason No.8 UNC, Duke, and preseason No.7 Pitt this year but not play against preseason No.1 Florida State nor preseason No.5 Clemson in the regular season. Golden Bears will also close the year at Stanford, the preseason No.2 team in the country.
Unlike the Pac-12, ACC does hold a Women’s Soccer tournament. While the ACC Men’s Soccer Tournament is a 15-team bracket, the ACC Women’s Soccer Tournament will remain in a six-team format. Most likely, the teams that qualified for the tournament are already locks for the NCAA tournament.
Cal Women’s Soccer Alumni at Paris 2024 Olympics
The Paris 2024 Olympics was a “changing of the guard” for the Cal Women’s Soccer alumni on the international stage. Instead of Alex Morgan (USA) and Betsy Hassett (New Zealand), it was Ifeoma Onumonu (Nigeria) and Sydney Collins (Canada) who were “Calympians” this time around.
Unfortunately for the former Cal defender, Sydney Collins broke her ankle the week before the Paris Games in training and could not play. She also had injury hard luck just before the W Gold Cup earlier this year.
Initially named as an alternate, Ifeoma Onumonu got to play for Nigeria as a sub. In a very tough group, Nigeria went 0-3 in group play against Brazil (0-1), Spain (0-1), and Japan (1-3). Spain and Brazil were both semifinal teams at the Paris Olympics.
Outlook
The Preseason ACC Coaches Poll has Cal 11th. Goalkeeper Teagan Wy was named to the preseason All-ACC team.
Although the ACC is full of great teams, Cal has a manageable schedule. Combine that with a veteran group, one could easily see how the Golden Bears may win enough games to stay in the top half of the conference and be on the bubble for the NCAA tournament again.
My understanding is that this is only accessible on ESPN+ with a TV subscription to the ACC Network.
Cal escapes with a 2-1 nail biter. Lema with two cheapy goals in the second half. Commentators on ACCNX were not professional announcers. The play by play guy (who had a nice GOOOOOAL call) is a UC Berkeley staffer and the color commentator was a recent player. They have the the spirit of the thing but are not the caliber of PAC 12 Network soccer announcers. The camera work also wasn’t great. An amateur production. Happy to see the Bears win though.