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Bengals aim to rebound with new-look team after down year
By Aaron Garland
On August 16, 2012
After a down season last year, the Buffalo State women's soccer team is ready to endure a more
successful campaign in 2012 with a new-look team seeking to augment its play with a new philosophy.
Last year, the Bengals suffered their first losing season since 2007, finishing 6-10-2 (1-6-2 SUNYAC).
Improving will be no easy task.
The team has to replace four departed seniors and cope with the premature departures of several
players for various reasons. Helping the returning players get back to the program's winning ways will be
an incoming freshmen class of seven players.
Head coach Nick DeMarsh said he is cautiously optimistic about the incoming class - one he says is
loaded with "specialists" ready to excel as specific role players on the team. On top of the freshmen,
there will be as many as 11 walk-ons and transfers with soccer experience set to tryout when training
camp opens in mid-August.
This mixed-squad of old and new faces will prompt DeMarsh to instill a new playing style this season -
one that involves a more aggressive attack toward the net.
"Obviously we need to score a lot more goals than we did last year," DeMarsh said. "Our goal output
was not even half of what it was in 2010, so I think part of our issue needs to be changing our style of
play a little bit. We tend to play a bit slower, possession build-up soccer.
"We might need to go and play a bit more direct just to try to make more crossing and scoring
opportunities - more shooting opportunities. You don't win games by passing the ball to each other.
You win games by scoring, so we definitely need to focus more on just being more productive in the
attacking third."
Leading the team's push back to prominence in the State University of New York Athletic Conference
(SUNYAC) is a pair of 2011 All-SUNYAC third-team members - junior defender Jordan Dudish and senior
forward Melissa Mahoney.
To create the scoring chances he desires, DeMarsh said he is toying with the thought of playing the two-
time All-SUNYAC defender, Dudish, closer to a midfield position to press the ball toward the goal more.
Though a taller task to play at or close to midfield, Dudish said she is ready to take on whatever role is
assigned to her.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge," she said on the prospect of moving up. "I mean, I played center-
mid in high school so I've played there before. But, it's a lot different than center-back (her current
position). I'm going to be working on getting my skill to where I can be a more technical player in the
center-mid, as well as my fitness up, so that I can play there and stay in the lineup."
Anchoring the front-line attack will be Mahoney, a player DeMarsh considers one of the best players in
program history. She's currently tied for 13th on the Bengals' all-time career scoring list with 39 points.
Assisting Mahoney and Dudish in the Bengals' new-look style will be senior captain Katie Hennes at
the midfield position and sophomore forward/defender Meghan Allen. Allen - a player DeMarsh said
he considers a "supreme athlete" - showed promise with four goals and eight points last year as a
freshman.
A large part of the team's struggles was its lack of a regular goalkeeper. The roster bolstered four
goalkeepers on the opening game roster, but by the end of the season there was no true keeper at the
position.
Junior goalkeeper Linda Banfield was the starter last year until she suffered a broken hand in the
team's fifth game and was lost for the year. Three other goalkeepers followed suit in not being able to
participate regularly for the team due to academic and personal reasons. This led to the Bengals often
using a field position player in goal, forcing them to play out of position and hurting the team's chances
to win.
With Banfield set to battle for the starting position with two incoming freshmen in training camp,
DeMarsh said he believes having an everyday goalkeeper can dramatically improve the Bengals' play in
the SUNYAC and ease the transition to the new style of attack.
"If you can't stop the ball from going in your goal, you're going to struggle," DeMarsh said. "So
psychologically, if the team is always stepping backward to defend because they want to protect the
goal, you don't have the same frame of mind as when you feel secure with a full-time goalkeeper -
experienced, confident.
"Now you feel like you can leave the back and go attack and score goals. So, it has a significant
psychological effect on the team when you don't have security in the back."
Unless things go awry for the second straight year, the Bengals will sport that needed security in goal.
Banfield is the only goalkeeper on the roster that has experience at the collegiate level. Despite that,
she knows she will have to work to earn the starting job, and welcomes the challenge the incoming
freshmen should pose.
"It's always scary trying to compete with someone - everyone wants to start," Banfield said. "But, I
mean, competition is great motivation and I love working with other goalkeepers - being able to learn
from them and be able to step my own game up to be compatible with theirs."
Evident by last year's overtime loss to Cortland and tie against New Paltz, two of the conference's top
teams a year ago, DeMarsh said he believes he has enough key pieces in place to field one of the better
rosters in the conference. He also said he looks at last year as a driving force for his team to have a
strong bounce-back season.
"It's always motivational," DeMarsh said on using last year as encouragement to get better. "You know,
we looked at last year as a challenge and we tried to take as many positive lessons as we could from it.
But every player that was on the team in 2010 remembers what that feels like to be the winning side -
to have people come and talk to you about your success, to be known on campus as winners.
"And now they've had the opposite experience and I think the latter is much more favorable," DeMarsh
said.
The Bengals kick off their season with the Farmingdale Tournament in Farmingdale, NY on Aug. 31 and
Sept. 1, before heading to Santa Cruz, Ca. the following weekend for the UC Santa Cruz Tournament.
Aaron Garland can be reached by email ar garland.record@live.com.
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