While most Drexel students have their eyes set on getting to the end of their co-op and hitting the beach to soak up the last days of summer, Ray Goon, the Head Coach of Drexel Women’s Soccer team, is putting the finishing touches on an offseason where improvement has been top of mind.
“Last season was a bit of a disappointment. We had higher expectations of our team for the 2023 season. With that said, the returning players really made a commitment to work harder, take nothing for granted and just work on all the little things.”
Goon has led the Women’s soccer program since it was reintroduced in 1997. In his 26 years at the helm of the program, Goon has worked to establish Drexel as a relevant contender in the conference on a yearly basis. In the past 10 seasons, Goon has made the CAA playoffs six times, something that the program did not achieve in any of its first 16 years. In 2022, it appeared like Goon had built perhaps his strongest team yet, going 11-3-5 and making it to the CAA Semifinals.
In 2023, it would not have been wrong to expect Goon’s team to build upon their success, but, instead, the Dragons finished 9th in the CAA, spending the conference tournament as spectators. The season was additionally disappointing as it wasted the final years of Annalena O’Reilly and Delaney Lappin’s eligibility, two program legends who have a spot on just about all of Drexel’s all-time statistical lists. Now without those players, Goon will have to figure out how to achieve greater team success without the support of his two greatest individual contributors.
“Certainly when you lose players like Lappin and O’reilly, you don’t replace players like that, but I don’t think you ever replace players in an apples to apples way. It’s a new, different team. Obviously scoring was a big part of their games, so how do we address that with the players we have. We may not have one single player who will step into that void, but it’s a team challenge and responsibility to score and defend. The fun part about every season is that it’s a new team and seeing who develops and emerges when there is an opportunity to do so.”
So, as a coach, it is incumbent upon Goon to build the team back up, all while trying to take lessons from what went wrong the previous season.
“The easy generalization is, we need to score more goals than we give up. We could focus on the defensive end, allowing less goals…I don’t want to say that we need to increase our goal scoring but we want to feel comfortable with the amount of opportunities that we are creating, and then whatever happens happens. I think you focus more on creating opportunities than the statistic of goals scored…Just using the fact that we were disappointed last year as our motivating factor, and working hard to play a little more efficiently is our theme, rather than comparing stats year to year,” said Goon.
Drexel had their first scrimmage of the season as they took on Rider University on Aug. 4. For Goon, scrimmages are a crucial litmus test for the team and staff to analyze where they are heading into the season.
“As a fall sport, we don’t have the luxury of a long fall, we basically have two weeks to get everything together,” explained Goon. “With scrimmages, we want to see what we have, give some direction and guidance as to how we want to play, observe what our tendencies are and where we think we will be effective and where we need to work on.”
With the season kicking off, there are a lot of questions left unanswered. Between Lappin and O’Reilly, the Dragons have lost 19 goal contributions from a team that scored 35 goals. Despite this looming problem, Goon is not in a rush to force an answer to this question.
“We were very pleased with the players we brought in and we feel that we have good depth that gives us a lot of options on what we might look like…My philosophy is best players play. That can change on a game to game basis, you need that competitive element to drive players,” explained Goon. “The fun part about a season is that it’s a blank canvas and you get to paint that picture as the season goes.”
As for the season that lies ahead, Goon is focused on simply putting his program in position to give themselves a chance at an NCAA Tournament berth.
“Every year the goal is to play in the NCAA tournament. We need to win the conference and get the automatic bid. In order to win in Conference playoffs, you have to make the playoffs. We certainly feel that we are a playoff caliber team and contender, and if we are fortunate enough with our results and have the opportunity, then we survive and advance. That’s the thrill for all of our players, that’s why they’re here. I think we will be a contender, and let’s see what the Soccer Gods have to say about that.”