A year after ten seniors were honored at the Cougars’ final home game of the season, WSU soccer sits in a much different place. The roster now features 14 freshman, two redshirt freshman and a handful of transfers of different experience levels.
The team enters the season with several unknowns including the winner of the starting goalkeeper battle, the team’s defensive strength and how the newcomers will contribute to a team that has important roles to fill.
If there is one constant for the Cougs going into this season though, it is the veteran core of its backline: redshirt fifth-year Jenna Studer and senior Peyton Price.
Studer is entering her sixth year of college soccer, taking advantage of two extra years of eligibility after being granted a medical redshirt last season as a result of an injury that cut her 2023 season short after just two years. With those six years under her belt, Studer stands as the most experienced player on the WSU roster.
“I’m in a spot where I’m a leader,” Studer said. “I’ve been doing this for a while. So I feel like I’m in a pretty good spot to help my teammates and help myself grow and get to the next level.”
Studer’s veteran presence will be key’s to the team’s development as a working unit, but her confidence may also serve as an example for the roster’s many underclassmen.
“If they have questions about anything, I think I am more than qualified to answer,” Studer said.
Price, who entered the WSU program at the same time as Studer in 2022 when Studer transferred from Arizona, has had the chance to build up chemistry with Studer over four years and will now play on the same side of the backline as Studer moves to the outside back position, where she will see an increased role in the build-up of the team’s offense.
The defense adds several new faces including three new freshmen and a pair of notable transfers in graduate student Brooke Brown and junior Meg Duvall.
Price said she sees the team’s new additions fitting best out wide on the back line, especially in three-back sets when the team puts an increased emphasis on pushing the ball upfield. Despite the changes in personnel though, Price does not see the defensive approach changing.
“I don’t think any part of it changes,” Price said. “I think we kind of still have the same goals. We don’t want to get scored on, we want to be very tight in the back. So I think, even though it’s a different backline, having veterans back there makes us super confident and we feel a lot better having played together for multiple years.”
While the approach may have not changed, that approach still must be passed onto the team’s youth and the freshman face a set of tough challenges to start the season. In the first half of the season, the Cougs face a pair of 2024 NCAA tournament teams, a pair of conference runner-ups and a strong program that competed in the gauntlet of the SEC.
“There’s no fool’s gold here,” Shulenberger said. “Alright? You got to step up and play. If you want to be the best, you got to beat the best. And it starts first day of practice and it starts the last game of the year.”
So far, for a head coach fighting through a load of initial freshmen onboarding, Shulenberger called his freshmen “very coachable” and said they are making the competition interesting.
“We’re excited and we’re young, ‘the young Cougs’, I call ourselves right now,” Shulenberger said. “Nobody knows a lot about us, which is perfect and I love that.”
Forward Becca Skinner, a local product from Clarkston, could lead “The Young Cougs” early on.
“I’m really intrigued with Becca,” Studer said. “She’s been really good at holding the ball up for us at the nine spot, which in previous years we’ve just had people who run over the top and they can run and get there, whereas she, as a defender, is easy to find and I know she can hold the ball really well, so that’s exciting.”
A freshman breakout, or at least flashes of potential across the roster will likely be necessary to bring the team to the next level. Bringing this team to the NCAA tournament, a goal both Studer and Price emphasized, will still fall largely on them in what should be a bittersweet final season.
Price said she wants to make a statement in her final season, but leaving with Studer and defensive mid Maggie Mace, the two she entered the program with, still makes her sad.
“Coming into the preseason, that first game and our exhibition game, it almost makes you teary eyed, realizing it’s kind of the last first of everything,” Price said.
That reality will hit for Price when WSU faces Utah State at 7 p.m. Thursday at Lower Soccer Field.
