If you read my other article this week, you will have realized something, something you maybe, probably already know. Trinity is really good. Trinity is really good at being a school and at having good dorms. People complain about Trinity stuff, but just going on a few college visits with my sister “” or visiting a friend who is in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M “” shows me just how nice our dorms are. That aside, we’re also really good at sports. Sure, not every team wins every game, but a lot of teams win a lot of games.
When it comes to fall sports, there are five sports. First is cross-country, and they are doing pretty hot. (I was going to make a joke about hot chile peppers and Chile Pepper Festival but I don’t know where that joke would go. Honestly I’d probably just be running around “” ah, get it?)
Second is football. We’ve had a pretty rough couple years with football, at least by Trinity standards. However, as their mildly confusing t-shirts indicate, Trinity? football is ready to SFFS (start first, finish strong) and “Be the standard.” So yeah, maybe SCAC wasn’t their place to shine, but so far they are undefeated in their new conference. There’s a lot of promise here.
Third is volleyball. Coach Julie Jenkins just won her 300th game. The lady is a living legend. Also, the volleyball team just started a Twitter account, which followed me. So yes, I’m a fan. The team is currently No. 3 in the nation, which is crazy good.
Fourth is soccer. I guess fourth and fifth are men’s and women’s soccer. They are two very different teams with different playing styles and different personalities, but they are both very good. Crazy good even. This is the main crux of this article.
Is Trinity soccer so good that we just don’t even care anymore?
I am going to focus on the women’s soccer team, not because they are my favorite of all Trinity teams “” sorry baseball, they are “” but because their winning margins are more spectacular. The women’s soccer teams within SCAC offer little to no competition. The fact that Centenary College scored one goal to Trinity’s 10 is a rarity. In the entirety of the season, the Tigers have allowed three goals and have scored so many that I think I’m going to have to use a calculator. Hold on a second “¦ SIXTY THREE.
That’s right, so far the Trinity Tigers have scored one shy of 60 goals in 10 games. I don’t need a calculator to tell you that’s an average of almost six goals per game.
“In college sport, I’d say it’s pretty rare,” said Kristen Canepa, sophomore defender. “I mean considering who we play, it’s not “¦”
“Who even scores six?” said Johnny Kasias, business administration major, overhearing our conversation. “That sounds like a baseball score.”
“OK,” Canepa said. “It’s pretty rare, especially in collegiate sports.”
While 6-0 is the most common score for the women this season, it is not the most impressive. There has also been 9-0, 10-1 and 13-0, in addition to pre-season scores of 2-1, 2-0 and of course their singular loss of 0-1. In conference play, however, the score has been 6-0 or higher.
In fact, within the conference, every game as of this week has had a score of at least 4-0. This is partly due to the weaknesses within the conference.
“I think people understand that we score a lot but I don’t think they realize that type of scoring doesn’t happen much with the rest of the conference,” said Julia Camp, senior forward.
“The more we score, the harder we work. We all strive to play our best game and put our best foot forward,” said Halleanne Dure, junior forward. “I believe that we go into every game striving to do better than the game before. Throughout the week, we work on putting those new things into practice to improve our play.”
Let me lay something else down. This is not how soccer works. The beautiful game is not famous for a lot of scoring. Games with high scores are outliers. Take the famous final game of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, which is the most-watched soccer game in American history. It ended with a score of 5-2 with the US beating Japan.
Statista charts the average number of goals scored per game at the FIFA World Cup from 1930 to 2014, which shows an average of 3 goals per game.
So we’re twice as good, you might say. However the amount of effort that goes into scoring each goal in soccer cannot be overlooked. Scoring is hard.
“Trinity women’s soccer traditionally wins,” Dure said. “I believe our student population expects us to beat our competitors.”
Despite winning a bunch, it is still exciting to watch people score.
“I think there’s a big difference between us and the people we’re playing,” Canepa said. “Usually the goals are good goals so that’s exciting.”
Games with lots of goals are exciting, but so are games with close scores.
“I think score is fun but if it’s 0-0 it’s also more intense and fun in a different way,” said senior forward Colleen Markey.
Trinity women’s soccer team makes it look easy, but it is not at all easy to score. That is just how good they are.
