The 2003 LSU soccer team completed its season over the weekend and made school history by becoming the first team to have back-to-back winning seasons. But the Tigers’ 10-9-1 record and 2-7 mark in the Southeastern Conference fell short of making them eligible for postseason play.
“Obviously we had our goals set higher,” said junior forward Artie Brown. “That [a winning season] was one of our low tier goals. This season was quite unpredictable. We would never have thought we would end up 2-7 in the SEC. We thought we had the best team we ever had. It was kind of a bittersweet season for us this year.”
LSU began the year with a five-game winning streak, but that ended with a tie to Tulane then a loss to No. 12 Texas despite having a 3-1 halftime lead. Following two wins against in-state rivals UL-Lafayette and Southeastern, the Tigers opened up SEC play with an 0-3 skid. LSU then seemed to turn things around with two SEC wins against Mississippi State and Georgia, but proceeded to drop five straight until snapping the losing streak in their season finale against Southern.
The Tigers were generally competitive in all of their games, losing many close ones in conference.
“If you go back and look at our season, we had three one-goal losses in the conference and that is how it works in the conference because if you turn those into wins, we’re in the SEC tournament and possibly the NCAA tournament,” said coach George Fotopoulos. “We were very competitive this year and I just think we had a couple of bad breaks. The majority of all our losses are against Top 20 teams. For the most part, this team fought hard all year. ”
The Tigers’ bad breaks came early in the season with injuries to key incoming players.
“We started out with some injuries to two freshmen, Ashleigh Gunning and Michelle De Cespedes, that we never really recovered from,” Fotopoulos said. “Those were two major recruits who kind of fell behind and we had some major injuries throughout the season to some of our key personnel.”
Senior midfielder Jen deHay said she believes the team was successful in many things throughout the season.
“There were some ups and downs,” deHay said. “Even though we lost quite a lot, I would say there are more ups than downs. If you look at it more, it’s kind of a big rebuilding year. The goal of the season was to rebuild and show the incoming players what to do. They have way more athletic ability than we do. We just had to show them what it takes to be a Tiger.”
Senior forward Rachel Cohen said this season was an important building block for the future success of the program.
“I think everything is building towards next year,” Cohen said. ” I just hope the future builds on this and keeps going forward.”
The Tigers will have both of their leading goal and point scorers back for next season, Brown with 13 goals and 29 points tying freshman forward Stacy Bishop for the team lead in points on the season. Bishop notched 12 goals on the year, making her the second leading goal scorer for LSU.
Fotopoulos said the team is young and the program has made important strides throughout his tenure, bringing LSU closer to his five-year goal of turning around the program he inherited with only four wins the season before.
“We still have a long ways to go,” Fotopoulos said. “When I first came here, I thought our fifth year would be our year we could turn it around.”