SHORELINE — It’s not easy to play with only 10 players on your roster, but that’s exactly the situation the Shoreline Community College women’s soccer team finds itself in this season.
Coach Mark Szabo and the Dolphins thought they would have an easier time recruiting this year.
Last year they qualified for the Northwest Athletic Association of Community College semifinals and posted a 15-2-4 record, the school’s best mark ever.
Instead, they’ve gone back to the way things were: struggling to field a team.
Last year was the first year the Dolphins had more than nine players to start the season and didn’t have go around campus scrounging up more bodies. But that’s the situation they find themselves in right now literally talking to anyone at school who happens to be wearing a soccer shirt.
“I had big hopes and big plans,” Szabo said. “It’s sort of frustrating. It’s reality. We’ll take our players and together we’ll make the best out of the situation.”
As a result of injuries, academic ineligibility and personal issues, the Dolphins are missing up to 12 players that could have come back.
“It’s a really frustrating time,” Szabo said. “That’s how most women’s sports are in community colleges.”
It’s not only Shoreline feeling the pinch. Bellevue, a team in the NWAACC’s West Division, forfeited its first five games because it didn’t have enough players and other schools in the association are struggling as well.
“We got good players, it’s just we don’t have enough of them,” Szabo said.
Despite its woes, Shoreline is off to a 2-3-1 start in NWAACC play and will probably make the playoffs because they play in the extremely weak North Division. Through Tuesday, the Dolphins were the only team in the North that had won a game.
Shoreline returns three players off last year’s squad: sophomore defender Ashley Togerson (Cascade-Everett), a first team all-NWAACC selection; sophomore defender Maggie Tonkin (Meadowdale); and sophomore midfielder Sarah Coulson.
Top newcomers include sophomore midfielder Stephanie Brossmann (Ballard), who played for Willamette University in Oregon two years ago; freshman forward Carly Pierce (West Seattle); and freshman forward Amanda Zueger (Lake Stevens). The speedy Pierce and Zueger are being counted on to score goals for the Dolphins.
“Those three newcomers are the most talented we have,” Szabo said. “Hard-working players surround them and do the dirty work. We put everybody together and we come up with a very good team.”
“As our fitness improves throughout the year we’ll become a difficult team to beat,” he said.
The biggest hole is at goalkeeper. The Dolphins had a couple players they hoped to fill the position but nothing panned out, Szabo said. Right now the team is rotating a couple midfielders and defenders in the goal.
Brossmann said playing short — 11 players comprise a full team on the field — “definitely affects the way we play. We have to play a lot more defense. We don’t have enough bodies to run.”
“It’s definitely changed our strategies a bit,” she said. “We’re dealing with it pretty well.”
A pair of road wins over Lower Columbia and Clackamas helped boost the team’s confidence.
“I think that’s what’s keeping everyone here,” Brossmann said. “It’s love of soccer, love of the game even with the hard situation. We definitely hope to make it to playoffs and make the semifinals. Definitely with the league we’re in it’s a possibility.”
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