Soccer Preview: Bramble Looks for Turnaround in First Year
8/11/2008 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Aug. 11, 2008
By Scott LattaUA Media Relations
For Alabama's 27 women's soccer players, Nov. 16, 2007 is the day they'll remember as the point where it all changed.
It was then, two weeks after the team's final match of the season against Auburn, that head coach Don Staley, after 14 seasons at the helm of the Alabama women's soccer program, announced his resignation and the search began for his replacement.
Suddenly, the two-time SEC Coach of the Year, who had 135 career wins at the Capstone and who was only one of two coaches in the Southeastern Conference to coach since the sport's inception in the league, was gone. The future of the program, it seemed, was cloudy.
But ask the players on the team now, and they might give a different date for when the program turned: Nov. 30 - two weeks after Staley's departure, when then-Clemson head coach Todd Bramble arrived in Tuscaloosa as the new Alabama women's soccer coach, bringing with him seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and a plan to turn the Alabama program, which ended last season on a six-match losing streak, around.
It was then that the transition truly began.
"I couldn't be happier with the start we're off to here," Bramble said, "both with the team and the athletic department and community. Everything has exceeded our expectations."
In his first year, Bramble faces the task of re-motivating a team that, after starting the 2007 season 8-2-1, won only one of its final nine games. To do this, he brings with him a system from Clemson that is proven and tested and, perhaps more importantly, flexible to suit the strength of his players.
After experimenting with different formations in the spring season, Bramble said Alabama ended in a 4-4-2 formation and has no problem switching it around once the comfort level with the personnel is in place.
With such a dramatic transition expected, Bramble knows he will have to rely on his returning senior leadership to help navigate the team through his first year as their coach. Thankfully, Alabama's roster features seven seniors, all of whom have logged quality match minutes in the past, and who have the experience to lead some of Alabama's younger talent.
"We've got seven seniors coming back and I think there's a good portion of them we're going to be counting on to log quality minutes," Bramble said. "We're going to lean on them. They've got strong leadership qualities. They're awesome players with great personalities and have played a lot of minutes here in the past, so I'm hoping that will be a strength of our team, that we won't be relying heavily on freshmen to come in and impact things for us."
On top of the seniors that return for the Crimson Tide, Bramble welcomes back all five of the top scorers from last season, four of which that will don the crimson and white beyond 2008.
Sophomore Victoria Frederick, a SEC All-Freshmen team member, tied for the team lead in points and goals with 13 and five, respectively. Senior Kailey Corken and junior Alex Butera also recorded 13 points apiece. Corken and Butera each led the squad with five assists and netted four goals.
Sophomore Carly Mygrants closely followed with 11 points in her rookie campaign. The Dayton, Ohio native tied with classmate Frederick with five goals while dishing out one assist. Sophomore Rosaly Petriello finished her freshman season with nine points on three goals and three assists.
While Bramble said the evaluation of his players is something he can prepare for and learn from, what's unknown about his new team is how they will handle themselves psychologically on the field, such as late in games or during a losing streak.
After a successful spring season, however, his team has already shown positive signs on the field--signs that there may, in fact, be a number of future dates to come that may one day be remembered.
"I can't imagine them handling it any better than they have," Bramble said. "I think they've been really excited about our coaching staff as a whole. This spring they demonstrated an unbelievable amount of hunger to win and to learn. We had a really successful spring, and the learning curve was steep but they came through really well."
On the slate for the new field manager is eight teams that made the NCAA tournament last season, including the defending national champions in Southern Cal. Five tournament teams reside in the SEC and three tournament participants will face the Tide in the first five games of the season.
Alabama opens its 2008 schedule against a Memphis team that won 17 matches and made the tournament. The Crimson Tide will face the Women of Troy in a cross country battle in Los Angeles on Sept. 7. UA will then square up against instate rival Samford, a team that won 15 fixtures and played LSU in the first round of the tournament last fall on Sept. 12.
The Crimson Tide opens SEC play at Vanderbilt on Sept. 26 and will host its first league home match on Oct. 3 against Mississippi State. UA then heads into a tough stretch in the middle of October as it will face four of the five SEC teams that made the tournament in consecutive contests. Alabama will conclude its regular season at rival Auburn on Oct. 31.
