Getting to Know the Coaches: Women's Soccer -- TUESDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Getting to Know the Coaches: Soccer

We continue our journey of getting to know coaches for various women's teams. This edition features the women's soccer coaches.

Karen Ferguson-Dayes, head coach

Coach KFD is one of the longest tenured coaches at Louisville and the longest Louisville women's soccer has had in its history. She took over in 2000 as the eighth head coach in program history.

Ferguson-Dayes is the winningest coach in program history, having over 200 total wins. She is the only coach in program history to lead the Cards to the NCAA Tournament.

Before coming to Louisville, Ferguson-Dayes was an assistant coach at Connecticut for three seasons. The Huskies made it to the Elite Eight or further in all three of those seasons. She was an assistant coach at Boston University for two years before that.

As a player, KFD spent her entire time at Connecticut, making it as far as the Final Four and being named to the All-Tournament team. She also played for the US National Team for two years.

Nick Stirrett, assistant coach

Stirrett joined the Cards during the summer of 2021 and is beginning his third season with Louisville.

He came to Louisville from Oregon State, where he was an assistant coach one year and an associate head coach the following year. The Beavers had one of the biggest improvements in a one-year stretch in NCAA women's soccer history.

Stirrett was at Illinois for three years as an assistant coach prior to Oregon State. He worked with the goalkeepers as well as being their recruiting coordinator.

He was with Penn State as an assistant coach for one season in 2015. The Nittany Lions won the national championship that season.

Before his transition into Division I, Stirrett was the head coach for the men's soccer team at Mount Union for two years. Before that, he was a head coach at Northern Illinois, DePauw, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Hunter Norton, assistant coach

Norton has been with Louisville for eight seasons. The most recent six seasons, Norton has been an assistant. He was a volunteer assistant the first two years.

Prior to Louisville, Norton spent all four of his collegiate careers playing for Georgia Southern. He started every game in his career and earned multiple SOCON honors.

Jing Hughley, director of operations

Hughley has been with the Louisville women's soccer program since 2009, being the director of operations for the entirety of that period. She played a program support role for all Louisville sports for four years prior to that.

Hughley was a volleyball player at Louisville and never played soccer in college. She was a setter and earned several Conference USA accolades. The Cards made the NCAA Tournament in all four of her seasons.

Women's soccer has the first event of the 2023 season for Louisville Athletics when they face Miami University in a scrimmage in Oxford on August 6.Their first home event is on August 17.

Happy Tuesday and Go Cards!

Jared

Locals on the Squads -- MONDAY CARINAL COUPLE

 LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL TALENT ON FALL ROSTERS FOR CARDS 

As we get nearer to the beginning of the University of Louisville women's fall sports schedules, let's take a look at three of the activities we'll follow closely at CARDINAL COUPLE (Women's Soccer, Field Hockey and Volleyball) in terms of local high school athletes who have joined these three rosters. 

Here at CARDINAL COUPLE, we await to see what guidelines and implementations the ACC is going to hand down to UofL as far as how we'll be able to cover activities. Of course, we always love the chance to cover these in-person and live-on-the-spot --- but with the spike in the Delta Variant of the Coronavirus -- we're not sure yet whether we'll be doing that or just following events on our laptops and ACC Network broadcasts..

Either way, we'll do our best to get you the news. 

A Fall Sports Media Day from the past

We also haven't received any notification yet on a potential Fall Sports Media Day date and time for women's athletics. Yearly, this is a great event for us to get interviews, comments and talk to the coaches and student-athletes that'll be doing the work. We hope it'll occur after a pause last year because of the pandemic.  

Today, we'll look at women's soccer.

Either myself or one of our other illustrious writers will cover Field Hockey and Volleyball "locals" as their season get closer to a start.  

WOMEN'S SOCCER

Karen Ferguson Dayes' "Kicking Cards" get it underway first for the fall UofL women's sports squads on August 14th....when Ball State comes to town... so we'll start there.

WSOC has a roster of 26 student-athletes, as of the latest listing, and out of those, there are three "local" Cardinals we'll keep an eye on. 

Cassie Amshoff is no stranger to us or the program. The senior forward from Louisville's Sacred Heart Academy begins her fourth year as a Card. She was an integral part of the squad last season -- starting in nine matches for UofL. Although she did not score a goal in 2020, she was a major part of the offensive attack. As an aside, she was the Kentucky Gatorade Player of the Year in women's soccer in 2017 -- her senior year at SHA. 

Savina Zamborini is a sophomore forward for UofL that played her high school soccer at Louisville Manual High School. As a freshman in 2020, she saw action in 10 games, with three starts. Although she did not score a goal, she did record five shots with three of them "on goal". Savina was named to the United Soccer Coaches All-South Region Team in 2019 -- her senior season at Manual -- and First Team All-State in Kentucky. She scored 40 goals in her final two seasons at Manual.

Incoming freshman Brooke Dardano joins Louisville as a freshman out of South Oldham High School. She's a midfielder and had outstanding campaigns in her final two years out in Crestwood. She tallied 11 goals and 27 assists in her junior season at South Oldham. Here senior season was shortened by the pandemic, but she was still able to get six goals and six assists. Her squad was an impressive 44-12-3 in her final three years. 

As a whole -- the Louisville women's soccer roster enlists 10 incoming freshmen, five sophomores, three juniors and eight seniors. 

One of the major questions for 2021 involve who will take up the scoring mantle now that Emina Ekic has graduated. To be sure, there is a wealth of experience returning that could step up and implement "goals" in Sarah Hernandez, Ravin Alexander, Taylor Kervin, Corienne Dente, Maisie Whitsett, Morgan Bentley, Delaney Snyder and Cassie Amshoff --- all who were on the field at forward or midfield for Louisville last year. The Cards also have transfer Mikayla Hampton on the squad, who comes in from Northwestern as a redshirt senior. And....who knows which freshmen might step up to provide the scoring punch. 

On the defense and back in goalkeep, Gabby Kouzelos returns as one of the best tenders in the ACC. She brings in 69 starts in her four years at UofL and had recorded 73 shutouts in those four years. Opposing ACC Coaches have to be shrugging their shoulders when it comes to figuring out ways to get the ball past "Gabby the Goalie"...

New Cardinals assistant coach Nick Stirrett will most likely have a say when in comes to "balls in the net" At his previous stop (Oregon State) he was part of a staff that saw the Beavers goal-scoring go from six goals in 2018 to 31 in 2019. 

Let's get it started at Lynn -- we can't wait to see what this 2021 version of Louisville women's soccer looks like !! 

Have a marvelous Monday! 

paulie

UofL News Roundup -- SATURDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

Women's Soccer Welcomes New Assistant Coach

A new face will join Karen Ferguson-Dayes's staff on the sidelines next season as the University announced the hiring of Nick Stirrett. Stirrett comes to UofL from Oregon State, where he spent two seasons. The announcement credits Stirrett with helping increase OSU's scoring output from 6 goals to 31 goals in his first season. That will be a boon to the Cards as they look to replace their losses at the front. However, that may have just been coincidence as he appears to focus primarily on goalkeepers and defense. He was a big help there, as well, as the Beavers' sophomore goalkeeper had the fourth-best season in program history in 2019 with six clean sheets and a 0.980 goals against average.

Prior to Oregon State, Stirrett worked with goalkeepers and coordinated recruiting at the University of Illinois for three years. He was with Penn State for one year in 2015 and arrived there after a two year stint as the head men's coach at the University of Mount Union. Stirrett seems to have brought success along with him wherever he goes. Because his stints are so short, it's hard to tell whether there is correlation there or whether it is just coincidence. As Gabby Kouzelos enters her final season as a Cardinal, though, I'm sure she'd love to have an outstanding statistical season to improve her stock among the NWSL teams watching. The women's soccer season should get underway in a little over a month, so we'll see how the team looks with Stirrett alongside KFD for the remainder of the summer.

UofL Announces NIL Initiatives

The University has been busy in the background, it seems. Though Governor Andy Beshear did not announce his NIL Executive Order until Thursday afternoon (as Jared wrote about yesterday), UofL has already announced a number of items pertaining to NIL that have already been ongoing or are set for the months ahead and fall semester. From the University's release, the following items are in effect or will be in effect going forward:

• Throughout the month of June, student-athletes have been offered educational sessions to help aid them in understanding potential opportunities. Now that the EO is official, the sessions will soon include education on the University's rules and disclosure processes. 
• A pilot NIL law clinic this fall available to all UofL students including athletes needing guidance on their NIL opportunities.
• A sport administration elective class entitled "NIL in College Sports" offered for the 2021 UofL Fall semester.
• NIL, social media, and brand management education modules through UofL's "eLevate" partnership with OpenDorse, plus custom athlete assessments based on a student-athlete's current social media account and habits.  Information on that program announced earlier can be found at this link.
• Life skills programming (speakers, resources) through Athletics' Beyond the Buzzer and Cardinal Select programs.
• One-on-one consultations & continuing NIL education outreach provided to UofL student-athletes and their parents and guardians.
• A plan to partner with The College Licensing Company (CLC) & Game Plan for their "Compass" resources---which include online life skills education modules (including NIL related topics), NIL disclosure and reporting platform, and student-athlete career services.
• Creating a UofL NIL Advisory Board which includes several athletics staff, university staff and faculty members with subject matter expertise on media, marketing, branding, contracts, intellectual property, international student visas and employment, compliance and other areas to serve as an outlet for guidance in the rapidly evolving NIL landscape.
• UofL athletics administration continues to meet with individual teams and student-athletes to learn about their questions, proposed plans, and help them navigate through NIL opportunities

The University also announced that the NIL initiatives will be headed up by associate athletic director Matt Banker. According to the release, UofL is doing all of these items as they have been deemed permissible by the NCAA. "...the NCAA has indicated the following activities have been permitted by institutions without triggering impermissible institutional involvement in a student-athlete's name, image and likeness activity: (1) Providing educational programming on NIL and associated regulations; (2) Assisting in evaluating opportunities; (3) Assistance with compliance and disclosure expectations; and (4) Assistance in the evaluation of professional service providers."

As the University continues to develop its rules, regulations, and processes regarding athletes' use of NIL, we will continue to increase our understanding of how they will affect sports at UofL and how they may impact our coverage of those sports. UofL announced a particular site,   https://gocards.com/sports/nil, that will be a landing spot for all of their news, educational resources, and updates for NIL related matters. We will be monitoring it closely. If you're interested in reading more about the initial steps the University is taking, you can find the full release here.

Cardinal Couple Radio Hour

As Jared wrote yesterday, there will be more discussion on the NIL matters today on the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour. The crew will be a bit thinner this week, as Daryl and I drop off for various reasons again, but there's still plenty for the three remaining knuckleheads to discuss. They'll follow up all of their prognostications with another summer quiz, so you won't want to miss that. Tune in to the Cardinal Couple YouTube Channel at 11AM for the live show or check out the replay or podcast whenever you can. 

Until next time, Go Cards!