The Texas A&M soccer team signed five student-athletes to national letters of intent on Wednesday, February 1st.
Janae Cousineau (San Clemente, Calif.), Karlie Mueller (Sioux Falls, S.D.), Kristi Leonard (League City, Texas), Jackie Tondl (Omaha, Neb.) and Britt Blackwell (Grapevine, Texas) will join the Aggie soccer team for the 2012 season. Click to get all the SCOOP!
Howdy! I hope your New Year is off to a great start!
Classes have begun for the new Spring Semester at Texas A&M and there are lots of cool things swirling around our program, coaches, and great players. In this journal entry, I will hit on some of those news items…
The Big 12 Champion Texas A&M soccer team had several award-winning performances in 2011, reaping a large group of awards, both individually and as a team.
On the way to winning its 12th-and-final Big 12 Championship and entering the NCAA Tournament for the 17th consecutive season, A&M cleaned up on awards locally and across the country, including a conference all-time-best 12 Big 12 Player of the Week awards.
Freshman Kelley Monogue (McKinney, Texas) led the Aggie award collection, earning honors as the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year, the Big 12 Tournament Offensive Most Valuable Player and the No. 1 freshman in the country (TopDrawerSoccer.com). The forward also received numerous weekly awards, both on the conference level and nationally and was selected to the All-Big 12 First Team, the Big 12 All-Newcomer Team and the Big 12 All-Tournament Team.
The Aggies secured 10 slots on the Big 12 team, including four first-team selections in Monogue, senior Merritt Mathias, junior Beth West and sophomore Rachel Lenz. Freshman Meghan Streight was named to the second team and joined Monogue and freshman Annie Kunz on the Big 12 All-Newcomer team.
For outstanding performances, on the field and in the classroom, five players tabbed Academic All-Big 12 selections. Senior Bri Young, West and junior Nora Skelton were selected to the first team while Lenz and junior Mary Grace Schmidt took second-team honors.
Young and Mathias earned spots on the MAC Hermann Trophy Award Watch List and Monogue is listed as one of the 32 women’s college soccer finalists for the Soccer News Net College Boot Award. Both awards are to-be-announced.
The Aggies ended the season in the NCAA second round after earning a 17th-straight trip to the big dance and winning their 12th Big 12 Tournament in the team’s final season in the conference. To learn more
The Aggies’ great 2011 season came to an abrupt halt in the 2nd round of the NCAA Championship Tournament in Charlottesville, Virginia, when the #7 Aggies were upset by Virginia Tech. Going into the match, the young Aggies had been on an incredible run – going 13-1-2 since early September and winning their 12th Big 12 championship, and making their 17th consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
In this week’s Coach’s Journal, we will look back at the 2011 season and provide some video highlights of the year.
Hot off of its 12th-and-final Big 12 Championship last weekend, the No. 3 seeded Texas A&M soccer team will host Louisiana State Friday in the NCAA First Round. The 6:30 p.m. match at Ellis Field marks the No. 12 Aggies’ (15-5-2) 17th-consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament and their second time to tangle with the Tigers (13-7-1) in the postseason.
The Big 12 Championship will be held at Blossom Soccer Stadium for the 15th consecutive season.
Quarterfinals and semifinals games will be streamed live on www.aggiesoccer.com The championship game will be aired live at 3:30 p.m. Sunday on FSN.
The Aggies will open tourney play at 8pm this Wednesday vs. #7 seed Kansas, whom the Aggies defeated 3-0 earlier in the season in Lawrence.
The Aggies have an opportunity to win our 12th Big 12 Soccer Championship this weekend, making this Friday and Sunday (arguably) the Aggies’ biggest home weekend of the season!
Texas A&M (11-5, 4-1 Big 12) will host Oklahoma (6-10, 1-4 Big 12) and No. 2 Oklahoma State (15-0-1, 4-0-1 Big 12) in a pair of conference matches at Ellis Field.
Friday’s Senior Night match vs. the Sooners is set for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff. The Cowgirls and Aggies will match up Sunday at 3 p.m. on ESPNU. Last season A&M hosted OSU in what turned out to be the Big 12 Championship match, resulting in a 1-0 victory for the Aggies. This season, the Cowgirls are ranked No. 1 in the league with 13 points, while the Aggies are close behind with 12 points on the conference season.
This Friday we’ll host another important non-conference match; against Drake University. Then, next weekend we host two important Big 12 games – Friday v OU and Sunday v OK State. I will talk about the OK schools next week…
The Aggies are now 10-5-0 on the season. That’s quite a turn-around from our 1-3-0 start. The team continues to improve every time they step on the field together.
We’ve won 7 of 8 and 9 of 11 on this run by identifying, discussing, and working on many “little” things. We really didn’t have any big problems. We just needed to solve some little things to make that BIG difference.
I am blessed to have such a talented staff of coaches and close friends working with our great players and me. That group of coaches – Phil Stephenson, Wally Crittenden, Paul Sealey, and Lori Stephenson have each had a profound impact on the success this team is experiencing.
We still have a ways to go to be the team we think we can be. But, it has been an interesting and exciting journey so far.
I want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding that
We will fly to Lubbock today for a Big 12 match at Texas Tech tonight. The Aggies are currently in first place in the Big 12 and holds a 15-1-1 all-time winning advantage over the Red Raiders. But, this won’t be an easy game. Tech is having one of their best seasons ever, and are very good at home on their artificial turf surface. This will only be the Aggies 2nd match on an artificial surface since 1993.
This weekend we are on the road for games at Missouri (Friday at 6:30pm) and Kansas (Sunday at 1pm). In this week’s Journal, we take a look at both of those matches as well as the 5 game winning streak that the Aggies currently find ourselves
