Santita Ebangwese is listed as a graduate student goalkeeper playing in her first season with the Syracuse women’s soccer team. She’s also a former SU volleyball player that led the Atlantic Coast Conference in hitting percentage less than 12 months ago.

Last Sunday against Kent State, Ebangwese made her debut for Syracuse women’s soccer on attack. She switched between midfield and occasionally played center forward, positions which she hasn’t played since being a middle schooler, she said.

“It was fun,” Ebangwese said. “Little different than I was used to, but I loved helping out my team and rising to the occasion.” 

Position flexibility is a current necessity for Syracuse (2-3) which has just nine players that have played all possible games this season. By comparison, No. 1 North Carolina and No. 11 Duke both have 14 players and No. 4 Virginia has 15. Even as early as the season-opener, head coach Nicky Adams said she couldn’t have SU press all game because of injuries in the preseason and over the summer. The reduced depth hurt the Orange against Auburn and Kent State, both losses in which they controlled the flow of play in the first half but ceded control as the match wore on.

Adams said her players grew too tired in the second half to continue to challenge the Tigers in the two-goal loss. Auburn made 11 substitutions in the first half to Syracuse’s two. The gap in substitutions was 7-1 in the second half and both of Auburn’s goals came after the 50th minute.   

“We got handed a really crappy deck of cards in terms of injuries and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Adams said. “And I am not going to sit on the sidelines and quit at all … And I’m not going to let the team give up.”

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Last year, Syracuse faced similar struggles and were without goalie Lysianne Proulx, leading-scorer Kate Hostage and forward Sydney Brackett toward the end of the season. It required defender Taylor Bennett to roam upfield more often and holding midfielder Georgia Allen to play as a striker.

This year, Allen’s missed time not only because of England U-21 international play but an apparent head injury suffered at Kent State. Mackenzie Vlachos had to step into the holding midfielder role and others, such as Meghan Root and Kailee Coonan, were given greater defensive responsibility.

Syracuse’s formations had to be altered to account for the missing Allen. Against Colgate, SU played an aggressive 4-3-3 with outside backs encouraged to join the attack. Since their game against Siena, the Orange have packed the midfield and strengthened the defense with a switch to a 4-5-1 that features the two wingers dropping back when the Orange don’t have the ball.

Adams has given the players on the field freedom to interchange as they see fit depending on how they’re reading the game, Brackett said, who’s played both wings as well as an attacking midfield.

“We’ve been kind of given that blessing to be creative in that way which is nice,” Brackett said. “So we can read the game while we’re out there sometimes better than onlookers.”

Syracuse has also lost some of their ability to play through the midfield and transition from defense to offense. The Orange were forced to play longer balls to the wingers but still haven’t found the back of the net in the last three games.

Up front, SU will be without Hostage, last season’s leading goal scorer, for the entirety of the season, according to Adams. So Syracuse’s goal scoring has come from unexpected places. Defenders Shannon Aviza and Bennett have one goal each, both off set pieces. But only one SU goal this season has come in open play.

Still, early in her reign as head coach, Adams is looking more at how her team fights through the injury hurdles — not the results that come with it.

“We have ultimate effort and sacrifice and heart and passion and control our attitude and effort,” Adams said. “This team is going to go in a direction that it hasn’t gone.” 

Published on September 11, 2019 at 10:37 pm

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