2021 Women’s Soccer Preview
The long-awaited Colorado Buffaloes soccer season has arrived with the Buffs set to begin the season on February 6 against the University of Denver Pioneers. The Buffs will play in an 11-match, single round-robin league schedule for the PAC-12 conference and an additional four non-conference games.
The Buffs’ last game was a loss to eventual national runner-up North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tournament on November 22, 2019. It has been over a year since the Buffs have taken the field, and there is no doubt they will be licking their lips to get the season started.
In a coronavirus shortened season, every game will be monumentally important in order to secure a spot in the NCAA tournament that has been reduced from 64 teams to 48. In the past four seasons, the Buffs have made the NCAA tournament three times, in 2016, 2017 and 2019. The last two tournament losses came against North Carolina in their last two appearances. Last season, eight PAC-12 teams including the Buffs made the NCAA tournament, so there will be competition throughout the entire season to once again make it to the tournament. Three of the final four teams in the country came from the PAC-12; UCLA, Washington State and Stanford.
CU will be without two of its top players from the 2019 season in attacker Taylor Kornieck and goalkeeper Jalen Tompkins. Kornieck led the Buffs in 2019 with 12 goals and 6 assists in 22 games. Kornieck tied the CU career record for assists with 24 and became the school’s all-time points leader with 102. Tompkins became the program’s all-time leader in wins (49), saves (369), and save percentage (.841). Both players went on to sign professional contracts after the season. Kornieck was selected No. 3 overall by the Orlando Pride in the National Women’s Soccer League draft, while Tompkins signed with Vålerenga Football Damer in Norway.
Senior Gabbi Chapa was selected as the only senior to captain the Buffs this upcoming season, with juniors Libby Geraghty, Sofia Weiner, and Hannah Sharts also wearing the captain’s armbands for the Buffaloes. “We feel we have great leaders throughout our squad,” head coach Danny Sanchez commented. “The four players selected by their teammates are fantastic ambassadors for our university and soccer program. As we all know, it has been a challenging time for everyone since last March. I feel that this year’s captains, along with the rest of our squad, have really embraced the challenge. We are excited to start our season this Saturday against Denver.”
With the loss of Kornieck, the Buffs’ offense will be looking towards sophomores Tessa Barton and Roo Yarnell-Williams to get the ball into the back of the net. Barton finished her freshman season with five goals and three assists and Yarnell-Williams scored four goals in her freshman season. An injury limited Yarnell-Williams to just 11 games last season. In her sophomore campaign, junior forward Libby Geraghty scored four goals and tallied an assist and will be looking to increase her contribution this season.
With the departure of stalwart goalkeeper Jalen Tompkins, the Buffs will have a three-way competition between sophomore transfer Dani Hansen, and redshirt freshmen Megan Short and Emma Miller. Hansen is the only goalkeeper on the Buffaloes’ roster with any game time having transferred from the Washington Huskies, where she played seven games in 2019. In those games, she recorded four shutouts and only conceded six goals, chalking up a .739 save percentage.
The Buffs will begin the season with three non-conference games against the University of Denver, Northern Colorado and Weber State. The game against Northern Colorado will be a rematch of last season’s NCAA tournament first round in which the Buffs won 6-0. After the three games, PAC-12 conference play will begin with an away game at Washington, who the Buffs will play again two days later in a non-PAC-12 game. This season the Buffs will play the Huskies and the Utah Utes twice, once in PAC-12 play and once outside of PAC-12 play.
On March 7, the Buffs will travel to California to take on last year’s national runner-up Stanford and the following weekend CU will take on UCLA, and USC; those three games will likely have enormous tournament implications for the Buffs, especially if they can come out with at least two wins from the three games. Due to the competitive nature of the PAC-12 and the decrease in games this upcoming season, the Buffs will have to have a strong showing in the PAC-12 in order to make this season’s condensed NCAA tournament.
