11 saves off 19 shots and her first shutout of the season. After her career-high performance against the University of California, Keara Fitzgerald is a no-brainer for the West Coast conference’s defensive player of the week.
Fitzgerald’s defensive play matches the identity of this program to a tee, which head coach Todd Shulenberger realizes.
“We’ve been pretty steady defensively and it starts with our backs,” Shulenberger said. “But Keara made some big saves down at Cal and kept us in the game.”
After transferring from UC San Diego in 2024, Fitzgerald had big shoes to fill coming into the year. Former Coug and now pro goalkeeper Nadia Cooper set a high bar between the pipes during her Cougar career. As a former PAC-12 goalkeeper of the year, Cooper was the only WSU player with 10 or more saves in a game… until now.
With Fitzgerald filling out Cooper’s shoes nicely, Shulenberger notes assistant coach Mason Portalski’s role in developing quality keepers.
“We’ve had some great goalkeeper trainings here over the year,” Shulenberger said. “Mason has done a great job with our keepers, and he’s pushed them every day in practice.”
As a former Coug himself, Portalski has developed both Cooper and Fitzgerald into lock down keepers that solidify the backbone of this Cougar defense. Although the defense has shined so far this year, the offense has left quite a bit on the table. This is not lost on Shulenberger.
“We got to be more risky in the final third,” he said. “We got to take more chances in front of goal. We got to get more numbers in front of goal.”
Coming off their fourth match of the year, the Cougs have yet to wipe the zero off the win column. Draws to Idaho, Georgia and now California give them a record of 0-1-3. What has kept them from dropping those three draws has been standout defense, courtesy of Fitzgerald.
Despite the three draws, Shulenberger has his priorities locked in.
“It’s all about the conference,” he said. “It’s all about getting prepared for that. It’s one step at a time, one practice at a time, one game at a time, one road trip and one home game at a time.”
At the start of the year, Shulenberger admitted there was a goalkeeper race in the preseason. However, with Fitzgerald locking down the posts, it seems the competition has finally ended.
WSU heads on the road to play against UC San Diego Sep. 4 and UC Irvine Sep. 14 before coming back home to play against North Dakota State Sep. 18.
