With resurgent season, EWU women’s soccer rides into Big Sky tournament with lofty ambition

Taken without much context, the 2023 season appeared to be something like a worst-case scenario for the Eastern Washington women’s soccer team.

It was a trainwreck when it came to the record (2-14-1), a mark that looked unexpected considering that the Eagles were coming off back-to-back five-win seasons.

Those, of course, weren’t great either – the Eagles finished seventh in the Big Sky in 2021 and 2022, the first two seasons under head coach Missy Strasburg – but a two-win season hardly appeared like progress.

But when Strasburg examined that season, she saw a more complicated picture. Considering where the Eagles are this year – the No. 3 seed heading into the Big Sky Conference Tournament that begins Wednesday in Missoula – her diagnosis of last year’s record looks awfully accurate.

“You can dominate a lot of teams and still find a way to lose,” Strasburg said this week. “We were on the other end of a lot of that last year.”

This year has gone a whole lot better.

Back at the six-team conference tournament for the first time since 2019, the Eagles (9-5-4, 4-1-3 Big Sky) aren’t just looking to appear. They are looking to win it.

“We’re all very excited, but we know there is more to this tournament,” EWU junior Chloe Pattison said. “We didn’t want to just qualify. We want to go and win and bring home a trophy.”

The last time the Eagles did just that was in 2017, when they won the second of back-to-back Big Sky Tournament championships.

Idaho is the reigning tournament champion and the No. 2 seed in this week’s tournament. The Vandals (11-5-2, 5-2-1) and top-seeded host Montana (12-2-4, 6-0-2) earned byes; the winner of Eastern’s 10 a.m. game against No. 6 Portland State (4-8-4, 2-3-3) will play Idaho at 10 a.m. on Friday. Montana awaits either No. 4 Northern Arizona (4-7-5, 4-3-1) or No. 5 Sacramento State (5-6-6, 3-2-3).

The championship game is set for noon Sunday. All matches will stream live on ESPN+.

“We like our draw,” Strasburg said. “All three teams between us and a conference championship are teams that we tied … We don’t have to change who we are. We have to do what we do, but just do it a little bit faster, a little bit sharper and a little bit cleaner.”

Among the Big Sky’s nine teams, only Idaho (with 33) has scored more goals than Eastern this year (32). Pattison leads the Big Sky with 11 goals; no other player in the conference has more than seven.

Pattison’s play may look like a major factor in the team’s success, and no doubt it is. But Pattison was doing a lot of the same things well last year, too, Strasburg said.

For one thing, Pattison was playing up front alongside Maddie Morgan, the Big Sky’s leading scorer a year ago with 13 goals.

Pattison was also hitting the post and crossbar an awful lot, Strasburg said, occurrences that paralleled the team’s play as a whole: right there, but not quite good enough. Pattison finished with one goal on 19 shots.

“You hit the post enough times, it’s hard to pull yourself out of the rut,” Strasburg said.

Pattison said all those missed chances did take a toll on her mentally, specifically because as a forward she sees her role as that of a goal scorer.

But this season has been different.

“You want to help your team in any way you can, and for someone who plays up front, that means scoring goals,” Pattison said. “It was really challenging (last year), so my point of emphasis this year was to go into each game enjoying soccer and to not put a lot of pressure on myself. Once I stopped putting pressure on myself that I needed to score, it got easier.”

Held scoreless for the first three matches of the season, Pattison scored in each of the Eagles’ next five. During Eastern’s current three-game winning streak, Pattison has two goals.

Sophomore Kendall Moore, one of three Eagles players with five assists this season, scored the winner against Northern Colorado in Eastern’s regular-season finale, her fifth goal of the season. Junior Delani Walker, senior Charity Freeman and grad transfer Isabelle Herting have three goals apiece.

Strasburg said the addition of Herting this year has been crucial. Herting appeared in 55 matches over the past four seasons at Gonzaga, a program that won 36 matches over that span, including one in the NCAA Tournament (over Idaho) a year ago.

“Adding Isabelle was a really good move,” Strasburg said. “To insert someone into the team room who has been on the other side of a place we wanted to go (the NCAA Tournament) was incredibly beneficial.”

Eastern also hired a second assistant coach during the offseason, Hayden Hollinger, a move that Pattison said was significant because it took some tasks off Strasburg’s plate and gave her more time to coach them.

“She’s able to be more present and is more able to give us criticism, give us feedback,” Pattison said of Strasburg.

“We’ve watched a lot more film this year than in previous years.”

Hollinger has also brought a fresh eye to a team that thought it had a pretty good handle on its opponents, Pattison said.

“For us who have been here for a couple of years, we’ve seen (Big Sky opponents) so many times that we’ve gotten used to them,” Pattison said. “With (Hollinger), he can see a lot more on film of other teams that we haven’t been able to see.”

It’s just another of the little changes and adjustments that have added up to a much different outcome for the Eagles this season.