Nicholls soccer goes through another tough season but young players give hope for future

A 2-2 tie with Northwestern State in the final game of the year left the Nicholls soccer team with a 1-17-1 record for the 2023 season.

The final record extended to six years a run of three wins or less for the Nicholls program in a season. The tie with Northwestern left Nicholls with a 1-9-1 Southland Conference record and marked the first since the 2020 season that the Lady Colonels managed so much as a tie in league play.

Although the non-win streak in the SLC has reached 59 games, the draw against the Demons allowed Nicholls to avoid taking a 13-game losing streak into the 2024 season.

“It was the first, I’m going to call it, ‘positive result,’ getting the draw against Northwestern – first positive this program has had in conference play in over four years,” said Robert Podeyn, who just completed his third season as Nicholls coach. “To get that draw against a good team like Northwestern State, I think was kind of a victory for us. Most of the players stepped off (the field), saying, ‘wow, if we had done this the whole season, we would be in the conference tournament.’ I agree.

“I think if they had kind of found their stride, maybe, in the middle of the season, I think there were teams we were capable of beating,” Podeyn continued. “I think we were capable of beating Commerce on the day, I think we were capable of beating Corpus Christi on the day, Incarnate Word, and certainly Northwestern, even Southeastern.

“The question is, can we take that experience, learn from it, and grow, and be that team that comes in and doesn’t get wrapped up in the fact we haven’t won a conference game in five years, doesn’t get wrapped up in the history of losing in the program, and focuses on the team we have here and now, and not get caught up in the legacy that’s been here.”

It’s a legacy that includes its share of bad breaks.

Coming off a 2-16-1 2022 season, Podeyn and Nicholls were looking for more firepower entering 2023 season with the likes of Alexa Deatherage and Avery Mondoux in the starting lineup.

Deatherage, a transfer from Spokane Falls Community College, suffered a knee injury and missed the entire season. With the season on the verge of starting, Nicholls lost rising sophomore Mondoux with a tear of her ACL.

“At that point, we are going to have to manufacture goals. We are not going to be as dangerous,” said Podeyn. “I knew at that point we were going to have to rely on the players we had last year to manufacture goals, maybe a couple of new players, but we were putting a lot on freshmen to come in and do that.

“We started out playing Jones Community College, which is a very good junior college. We tied them and couldn’t score. We had chances but just couldn’t score. That kind of epitomizes what was coming for us.”

Nicholls opened the regular season with losses of 5-0 to South Alabama and 7-0 to Florida International.

The Lady Colonels were outscored 14-0 through four games before scoring their first goal in a 4-1 loss to Jackson State.

Nicholls won its next game 4-1 over Texas Southern. The five goals in the two games would represent half of the 10 goals the team would score all season.

It was around that time that six Nicholls players came down with COVID.

“When we did well, we were creating chances, but we weren’t shooting. We were penetrating, we were possessing, but we weren’t actually shooting the ball,” Podeyn said. “When we made mistakes, we would make them in buckets, and we would panic in situations in the game. So, we couldn’t lose a game 1-nil that was a close game, we had to lose a game 5-nil. We have to find a way to trim these down.

“We went through training for the week, things looked really good. We would have great weeks of training. The kids who had COVID finally came back, some of them still struggle with their lungs, so they weren’t able to give us their full effort at that point because they were limited in minutes. Then we get six more kids that go on COVID. The next week, then we get five.”

Too many young players, Podeyn said, were forced into playing too many minutes.

“In a season, if you have a kid that’s played 250 minutes, that’s a fair bit of playing time in a season for a young player,” said Podeyn. “Most kids that don’t play are getting 30, 40 minutes. I think we had 25, 26 players that played 250 minutes on the season. That’s a lot.

“The snowball effect of losing those games, and losing them big, in games we should have done better, could have done better, it’s just that we made mistakes that at times we looked like we didn’t know what we were doing. It was because in those moments, we would panic.”

Other teams picked up on the Lady Colonels’ dilemma.

“The word got out that the way you beat Nicholls is you dump, chase, and press them. You press them in their half, they are going to make mistakes. We are trying to play our game and we are not learning from it, so we had to change some things around a little bit,” said Podeyn.

The changes didn’t work out too well.

“At one point, we changed the formation. It semi-worked, but not really, so we ended up going back and we really started to focus on breaking things down individually and positionally. We saw a lot of growth.

“The one game where it clicked was Texas Southern, where everything clicked. Then we get kids with COVID again, or we get injuries and concussions, and the normal things in a season, but it all kind of snowballed. When you have a team that doesn’t have the depth, and they are very young, when they get on the field sometimes, they will play well within the system because everything is kind of like scripted and structured for them, but the second an opponent they don’t know comes in and starts pressing them, then they are going to panic. That’s what happened.”

The losing streak started after the Texas Southern game and continued until the tie with Northwestern State in the season finale.

“I think the takeaways for us is we have a good core of players, a good, talented group,” said Podeyn. “We still have some areas we have to address in recruiting, and I think we’ve addressed some of those, not all. We are working to address the other parts we need to address.

“I’m excited about working with the team in the spring, and I’m excited about the spring when we bring in the next group of players. We have 10 girls that we are looking at that will come in in 2024. We are still looking for a couple more. We feel that group there is a very talented group that will challenge the group we have. I think it fills some needs in places where we need to kind of get better. At the same point, I think it gives us more depth in some other areas that we lacked.”

An obvious area of need is to improve upon the 10 goals scored all season.

“We need to be more than a goal a game,” Podeyn said. “We need to be somewhere in the 20s. We need to more than double what we are doing now.

“I think the players we have (including the return of Deatherage and Mondoux), and the players we have coming in, can get us close. I don’t know if it gets us quite there. Finding that additional weapon is kind of the focus on what we are looking at.”

Although the defense gave up 68 goals on the season, Podeyn said he feels more comfortable with that aspect of his team.

“Defensively, I feel a little bit more secure on what we have,” the Nicholls coach said. “I don’t think giving up 65 (actually 68) goals is indicative of our team defense. I think we are much, much stronger than that. I’m not as worried about that, but we do have some defenders coming in.

“I think we need to be better in the midfield, so we’ve added a couple of very, very good midfielders coming in. I think overall, you add in Alexa, she was looking strong in the spring last year when she came in, and the girls loved her. She fit right in and then the injury happens.”

Megan Cook and Elizabeth Zepeda, who split time at goalkeeper, will both be back next season.

“When you go with two goalkeepers, there’s always a fear that a coach has. If one gets injured, you get down to one, and you have no backup,” said Podeyn. “We have a few that are coming in this fall. We’ll have four, maybe five, goalkeepers for the next year. That’s makes for better internal competition.”

An increase in goals, coupled with a decrease in goals allowed, Podeyn said, could make Nicholls much more effective next season.

“I think you have to look at the same number – in the 20s. The question is, if we get better offensively, will our defense be strong enough to keep it in the 20s? I think it is,” he said.