Broncos Bucked By Bad Luck

According to Smith, the Broncos have lost their “best player and best leader” and will start the season with zero experience at center back. Oh, and a top recruit will red-shirt after a season ending foot surgery.

The best player tag belongs to midfielder Amanda Poach. Smith called her “Santa Clara’s best player, period and the best midfielder in the nation.” She has been making her mark on the Youth National Teams and Smith is convinced she is more than capable of competing for a spot on the Full Team.

Perhaps even more concerning than losing his best player, is losing his next best player and strongest leader in Jordan Angeli. “When you lose leadership, it affects so many people. It affects every day training. It affects team potential immensely. Jordan will have a chance to impact our group and still be a leader, but that’s going to be really hard. When you’re not traveling, when you’re not suiting up, when you’re not in the heat of the battle in the big game, it’s hard to be an effective leader,” said Smith.

Interestingly, Smith had pegged, first Angeli, and then Poach to join two-year starter Dani Potts in the center back position. That was, of course, before Potts suffered a season ending injury late in July. That leaves the Bronco’s struggling to fill not one, but two crucial center back positions.

To add insult to injury, the Broncos will have to do without the services of incoming Soccer Buzz top 25 recruit Chelsea Bednarz who Smith called his “toughest, most courageous forward.”

This set of circumstances would have most coaches wringing their hands but Smith is looking forward to the challenge. “The measure of a good coach and a good coaching staff is, can you bring your group to their potential? That’s our challenge and our group clearly still has a high potential to have a great season. Can the coaching staff figure out how to make that happen? That’s going to be the interesting thing going into this season,” he said.

Smith will look to Brittany Klein to fill the leadership gap left by Angeli and hopes that Kiki Bosio will tear things up for the Broncos just like she did in the Nordic Cup this summer for the U-21s.

As for predictions for the 2007 season, Smith is looking for a slow start and wouldn’t be surprised for his team to enter the NCAA tournament unseeded just as they did in 2000. That season, Danielle Slaton spent a large portion of the season competing with the National Team at the Olympics and Aly Wagner and Veronica Zepeda were out with injuries. “We really kind of had a mediocre regular season, but by the end of the season, we were playing really well. We went in to the NCAA playoffs unseeded, beat some excellent teams on the road and almost made it to the final four. It won’t surprise me if we go in to the NCAA tournament unseeded, but, we’ll be in the tournament and there won’t be any team that is looking forward to playing Santa Clara at the end of the year,” Smith predicted.