Moline's Musings

Illinois Soccer Adds Six

Posted by: Brian Moline

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 11:49 AM

Signing day for NCAA women's soccer was February 4, the same day as football.  However, the announcements for soccer recruiting classes tend to sprinkle out through the month.  There are a number of reasons for this.  Part of it is that some soccer programs want to wait until the spotlight is off football recruiting to garner a bit more media attention for their incoming classes.  Another facet of this decision is that most programs choose to wait until all invited walkons have been admitted to the university before they make their announcement.  Not everyone on a women's soccer team receives a scholarship, and programs prefer not to make separate announcements, as to not tacitly announce who is not receiving scholarship money. 

Now that I've spent five minutes prefacing this, here are the 2009 recruits joining Janet Rayfield's Illinois soccer team.  One of the first things you'll notice is that other than a goalkeeper from Collinsville, all of the other recruits are either midfielders or forwards.  That could be very good for an Illinois team that struggled at times to put balls in the back of the net.  One other thing to keep in mind is that Rayfield has a history of converting players to different positions.  Don't be surprised if one of these freshman ends up playing on the back line during their Illini careers.

Highlighting this year's class for the Illini is Nicole Read from Lake Orion, Michigan.  Read is rated as the #61 player in the 2009 class by Top Drawer Soccer.  She's joined by forwards Shayla Mutz from Chicago, and Marissa Holden from the Dallas area.  The two midfielders in the class are Nicole Denenberg and Katrina Fehrenbacher from the Chicago area.  Goalkeeper Katelyn Hoffman from Collinsville is the sixth member of the class.  The additions of Hoffman and Steph Panozzo (who committed last year but enrolled this spring after competing for Canada's U-20 National Team) give the Illini much needed goalkeeping depth behind returning starter Alexandra Kapicka. 

I'll be talking with Rayfield about the class a bit later today.  You'll be able to find those comments on IlliniHQ.com a bit later in the week.

bmoline@wdws.com

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