Verdoia led the WAC during league play with 57 shots, 28 points, and eight assists, leading or tying for the lead in every recorded offensive category throughout all regular season play. She received WAC Player of the Week honors three times in 2013 and was recently named to the Capital One Academic All-District First Team, District VIII. Verdoia was also named to the CollegeSoccer360 Primetime Honor Roll for the week of Oct. 14-20.
Woodward, the dean of head coaches at Seattle U, boasts 15 winning seasons during her 17 year career at SU, establishing herself as the winningest coach in SU women’s soccer history with a 228-90-30 overall record through the 2013 regular season. This is the eighth time Woodward has coached Seattle U to 15 or more wins in a season and the fourth time in the past six years the team has recorded 12 or more wins.
The Redhawks had four First Team All-WAC honorees including Verdoia, Julia Besagno (Maple Valley, Wash.), Monique Escalera (Riverside, Calif.), and Mary Hill (Mercer Island, Wash.) and five Second Team All-WAC honorees including Taylor Ritzman (Holladay, Utah), Ava Ames (Seattle, Wash.), Natasha Howe (Mission Viejo, Calif.), Kat Prati (Moorpark, Calif.), and Brianna Smallidge (Port Orchard, Wash.). Six of the nine received WAC Player of the Week honors in 2013 including Howe (Sept. 2), Smallidge (Sept. 2, Oct. 7), Verdoia (Sept. 23, Sept. 30, Oct. 21), Escalera (Sept. 30), Hill (Oct. 14), and Besagno (Oct. 28).
Prior to the start of the season, Verdoia was named Preseason WAC Offensive Player of the Year and Besagno was named Preseason WAC Defensive Player of the Year. College Sports Madness also named Verdoia Preseason WAC Offensive Player of the Year and Woodward Preseason WAC Coach of the Year.
College Sports Madness also named Verdoia and Woodward WAC Offensive Player and Coach of the Year, respectively, also naming Natasha Howe (Mission Viejo, Calif.) the WAC Freshman of the Year. CSM also named Verdoia, Besagno, Howe, Hill, and Smallidge to the First Team, naming Prati, Ames, Ritzman, and Escalera to the Second Team.
The Redhawks surpassed several milestones in 2013 including a seven-game shutout streak and 25 consecutive unanswered goals. As a team, SU racked up 10 WAC Player of the Week honors and recorded seven straight weeks of earning at least one honoree. They also enter this weekend’s WAC Tournament with a 13-game winning streak during which they’ve allowed just four goals. Seattle U is just the fourth team in WAC history to go undefeated in league play and the WAC first team to ever record 12 league wins.
Seattle U enters this weekend’s WAC tournament as the No. 1 seed, facing No. 4 Idaho in the semifinal match on Friday, Nov. 8 at 11:30 a.m. MT. The winner will advance to face the winner of No. 2 Kansas City/No. 3 Utah Valley in the championship game on Sunday, Nov. 10 at 12 p.m. MT, with the winner receiving the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.