While last years seniors, such as former captain Pam Riggs and midfielder Laila Danielsen, will undoubtedly be missed, there will be some new faces on the Hilltop squad this fall. Coach Verhees exclaimed that freshmen Denise Kenyon, Hege Johnson and Holly Steel have all made impressive debuts in practice.
Newcomer Denise Kenyon has also been a huge factor in USF's success. She scored the game winning goal in both the Dons road wins and is USF's third leading scorer. She has also scored in all of USF's wins, and was chosen as the Western Region's "Player of the Week."
Head coach Jean-Paul Verhees, whose 100th career victory came during that early streak, put the hot start into perspective: "11-0 doesn't mean anything. It only means something when you feel you have the momentum going." To be fair, four of those losses came to ranked teams, but the Dons hot start had built up everyone's expectations - most importantly, their own. "We were really confident," recalled junior forward Denise Kenyon. "Our first big challenge was Santa Clara, and we really wanted to win. But they were stronger than any of the teams we had played." According to Kenyon, that match - a 7-0 blowout that was the team's first loss of the season - took much of the wind out of the team's sails. "We got kind of discouraged, because we put so much on that game," she said. "We never really recovered from that loss." "If you're not familiar with this type of competition, with the nation's top 10, then you will make mistakes," Verhees allowed. "What they learned was to go up a notch, to go up a level. You have to learn from first seeing how they play, and eventually get it to that level yourself (TheFoghorn).
