4 Pilots Out Of 60

TopDrawerSoccer.com Team of the Season

1st Team

GK: Alyssa Naeher, Penn State
D: Carrie Dew, Notre Dame
D: Kasey Moore, Texas
D: Nikki Krzysik, Virginia
D: Marissa Abegg, Stanford
M: Yael Averbuch, North Carolina
M: Carolyn Blank, West Virginia
M: Brittany Bock, Notre Dame
M: Yolanda Odenyo, Oklahoma State
F: Casey Nogueira, North Carolina
F: Tobin Heath, North Carolina
F: Kerri Hanks, Notre Dame

Player of the Season: Casey Nogueira, North Carolina


2nd Team
GK: Jaimel Johnson, Tennessee
D: Jessie Davis, Penn State
D: Erin Hardy, UCLA
D: Greer Barnes, West Virginia
D: Janessa Currier, USC
M: Malorie Rutledge, LSU
M: Christina DiMartino, UCLA
M: Corky Julien, James Madison
F: Christen Press, Stanford
F: Kelley O'Hara, Stanford
F: Sanna Talonen, Florida State
F: Sophie Schmidt, Portland


3rd Team
GK: Dianna Pfenninger, Texas
D: Abby Lauer, William & Mary
D: Emily Zurrer, Illinois
D: Stephanie Logterman, Texas
D: Lauren Hyde, Florida
M: Hailey Beam, Charlotte
M: Sinead Farrelly, Virginia
M: Megan Rapinoe, Portland
F: Amy Rodriguez, USC
F: Lauren Cheney, UCLA
F: KayAnne Gummersall, Duke
F: Deanna Everett, West Virginia

(Note: Freshmen are not eligible for the Team of the Season – only the All-Rookie Team)


TopDrawerSoccer.com All-Rookie Team

1st Team
GK: Jillian Mastroanni, Boston College
D: Michelle Olivier, Portland
D: Camille Levin, Stanford
M: Teresa Noyola, Stanford
M: Beth West, Texas A&M
M: Julia Bouchelle, Boston College
F: Laura Heyboer, Michigan State
F: Lindsey Taylor, Stanford
F: Tiffany McCarty, Florida State
F: Melissa Henderson, Notre Dame
F: Sarah Hagen, Wisconsin-Milwaukee
F: Danielle Foxhoven, Portland

Rookie of the Season: Laura Heyboer, Michigan State


2nd Team
GK: McKinzie Olsen, BYU
D: Ashley Rape, Duke
D: Alyssa Pember, Boston College
M: Kate Deines, Washington
M: Katy Frierson, Auburn
M: Lizzy Simonin, Memphis
F: Sydney Leroux, UCLA
F: Emily Cressy, Kansas
F: Paige Maxwell, Ohio State
F: Cody Newman, Duke
F: Jordan Calhoun, TCU
F: Veronica Napoli, Northeastern

No east coast bias here huh? What a crock. UP, UCLA, and Stanford are all top 5 teams and they only have one player in the first XI. Who makes the selection and have they crossed the Rockies this season?

I agree totally. Who votes for these anyway?

At least the one West Coast player is from the Portland area, former LOSC star Marissa Abegg. Congrats to her!

That is pretty ridiculous, an all east coast 1st team sans 1 Cardinal

Sophie and Megan are definitely first team. What were they thinking???!!!!

The TopDrawer selections are the sole work of Robert Ziegler. I like a lot of what he has to say about women's soccer, and I like that he's even interested in the subject.

He does have a blind spot when it comes to the West coast. He generally ignores western talent at the recruiting level and western players in D1. I don't think its malicious or anything, I just don't think he gets West of the Mississippi much, so he only reports what he knows. The fact that West Coast players get any mention at all shows that they are so good they can't be ignored.


He's still walking around muttering to himself... "Keelin who?"

Needs to be re-named EastCoastSoccer

I remember in 2005 when he passed over Christine Sinclair (39 goals) for Player of the Year and chose what's-her-name from Penn St.

As I mentioned to geez on another board:

Of course there's no quota system (for me anyway), but of 36 players on the ToS, 10 are from 2 western conferences out of 30 national leagues.

For the 24 on the All-Rookie team, 7 are from those 2 conferences, plus another from BYU. So that's 18 out of 60 overall from the West (compared to the totality of players, schools and conferences that are in the west/rest of the country), just many have to be from the west for it to satisfy?


Breaking it down by conferences

TOS & All-Rookie
Big Ten 3 & 2 - 5 total
Big East 6 & 2 - 8 total
Big 12 (not east) 4 & 2 - 6 total
ACC 7 and 5 - 12 total
Pac 10 - 8 and 5 - 13 total
SEC (not east) 3 and 1 - 4 total
CAA 2 and 1 - 3 total
WCC 2 and 2 - 4 total
A 10 1 and 0 - 1 total

CUSA (not east) 0 and 1 - 1 total
Horizon (not east) 0 and 1 - 1 total
Mountain West (not east) 0 and 2 - 2 total

(so the leading single conference is in the west)
19 from the west - 17 from south and midwest combined (big 12 overlaps) and 24 from the east (including Notre Dame, Florida State which really aren't in the east either). It's not identical among the three but considering it's only 60 players, not exactly lopsided either).

Especially when you consider the number of college conferences in the west compared to the rest of the country - it's hard to say there's a "bias" there, or an ignorance of talent in the west.

So who do you remove from the 1st team for your own favorites?

It is true that I don't always know about every single recruiting prospects. How can I? My sincere apologies for whatever slight I have made to Ms. Winters or any other western player in years gone by. I won't go through all the match with our Players to Watch list, but again, western players are more than fairly represented in that too.

Finally - this is all fun for me - I promise. Nothing personal about it all.

harryb - also remember i named Michelle E. freshman of the year when nobody else did - yet more bias.

And admittedly TopDrawer did name Portland the preseason #1 in 2005 when nobody else did.

Thanks for the explanation, Robert.

And since it doesn't probably get said enough, thanks for doing all you do at TopDrawer.

Haha I think we sometimes idolize our Pilots a bit much, I mean they are fantastic players and whatnot, but I suppose there are OTHER good players out there as shocking as that might be...

That said, UCLA and UP and not 1 First team player between the two?? I suppose it's not so much the overall geographic disbursal of players as it is their overall ranking... But regardless I totally agree with your explanation and your efforts are most definitely appreciated in this part of the country, even if you don't sip on the Pilot Kool-aid as much as some of us would like

Thanks for the kind words. We're trying.

I hear rumors that ESPNU will televise a quarterfinal match this year. I'd love to see the Stanford-Portland game if the seeds play out.

UP's first round match (Friday, 8 PST), will be shown on ComcastSportnet Northwest. If you get the big Comcast sports package, I think you can get it. Here's the release about it:

http://www.portlandpilots.com/news/2008/11/13/WSOC_1113085617.aspx

And even if ESPNU doesn't pick up the UP/Stanford game (assuming it happens) I'm sure Comcast Northwest will.

RobertZiegler wrote:
So who do you remove from the 1st team for your own favorites?

I would remove Alyssa Naeher, Jaimel Johnson, or Dianna Pfenninger. Alyssa gave up 23 goals. I do not know Jaimel's exact numbers but she gave up 5 goals in her last 3 matches. Dianna gave up 12 goals.

Kelsey Davis allowed four goals all season long.


So why am I wrong?