This will be Jenna Hufford’s fifth and final year doubling as a wall in goal for the UH-Hilo women’s soccer team.
This will be Jenna Hufford’s fifth and final year doubling as a wall in goal for the UH-Hilo women’s soccer team.
And oh the stories she could tell.
In a nutshell: The Vulcans were upstart and over the moon in 2013, then fit to be tied in 2014. Hufford was down and out with an injury in 2015, and everyone was a day late and a dollar short last season.
Hufford is an elder-statesman at age 22, and, yes, she has seen some stuff go down in her time.
“Heaven,” the native of Shingle Springs, Calif., said. “I barely go home. This has been nothing but heaven.”
Even during a 5-7-4 campaign in 2016, where the draws felt like losses and the five one-goal defeats felt like something much worse.
“Last year going good, but we just couldn’t finish,” Hufford said. “We were looking for something we didn’t have.”
This season, they might have found it.
It’s conceivable that at some point during the season UH-Hilo will announce the hiring of another coach, relieving second-year soccer director Gene Okamura of the task of leading two teams.
Until he’s told differently, Okamura has tunnel vision and is going full speed ahead with both jobs into Saturday’s openers on Oahu. The women play Pace University (N.Y.) at 10 a.m., and Okamura brought in 17 players to supplement the returnees, six of whom started.
“Our talent pool has definitely gone up,” he said. “We brought back talent and experience and we brought in players who can be gamechangers.”
Junior forwards Carlie Reader, who spent the past two seasons at Chico State, and Jamie Salas, formerly of Arizona State, top that list, Okamura said, and are players who have “the ability to change the game on it’s head just like that.”
He calls junior Clarissa Guerrero, a 2016 redshirt, a natural goal scorer, and he feels senior Kayela Santiago’s speed rivals that of any player in the Pacific West Conference. Kamehameha graduate Bryana-Marie Ebbers will take on an expanded role after showing promise as a freshman.
Their mission is simple: put the ball in the net.
Hufford already has watched them do it in practice.
“We can finally finish a ball,” she said before a training session earlier this week. “It makes all the difference. A lot of the ties and the losses aren’t going to happen this year because we can score.”
Junior Tiera Arakawa is the Vulcans’ leading returning scorer with four goals in 2016 and she’s back in the midfield along with Astrid Perez, and the position has been bolstered by transfers Hedda Bjerklund, formerly of Division I Pacific, and Callye Lahmann. Waiakea graduate and junior Sabrina Scott spent much of last season working her way back from a knee injury that derailed her freshman year and “is starting to look her normal self,” Okamura said.
He’s been with the program either as an assistant or coach since 2013, and there were some seasons where he thought the team had maybe 14 quality players. This season, he thinks he has 26 to 27 quality players at his disposal, with an ample amount playing on the backline.
Seniors Sophie Satterlee and Milana Wolsleben, a transfer, will be solid and steady, Okamura said, and he likes what he’s seen so far from freshman Jada Macairan as well as junior Lucy Maino, who red-shirted last season.
“Lucy will help a lot,” Okamura said. “She has really panned out and fits the profile of what we want from an outside back.”
He will busy Saturday coaching two teams, but junior Meghan Langbehn, also a member of the cross-country team, will be busy as well.
Langbehn will start her day at the Big Wave Invitational at Kahuku Golf Course at 7 a.m. on the North Shore of Oahu, and after running she’ll hop in a car and get a ride to Kaneohe for the women’s soccer match.
“She says she’ll play,” Okamura said. “I say it’s possible she’ll play.”
Junior Dior Motas will help the unit as well when she gets healthy.
The Vulcans only allowed 19 goals last season in 16 games, but it wasn’t enough to forge a winning season since they only netted 16 goals.
Hufford admits she felt she needed a get a shutout each match last season to give her team a chance to win, and this season she would like to see the Vulcans dramatically lower the goals they allow, down to five or so.
“I’ve been working my butt off, with three coaches over the summer,” she said. “This is my last chance. I want to be the difference to make sure we win.
“We are in this to win it.”
Redshirt freshman Ysabela Gabrielle Barin is pushing for playing time at goalkeeper and providing a healthy competition, but Okamura said it’s hard not give Hufford the nod because of her experience.
She’s been on a good team and a couple of hard-luck teams along with taking a medical redshirt year, racking up 17 shutouts and numerous PacWest Defender of the Week awards along the way.
Hufford plans to leave for Maui in January and hopes to play professionally overseas, but before she goes it’s clear she feels the Vulcans could have a secret up their sleeve in her final go-around.
“It’s been a great experience, the best experience of my life,” she said. “I wouldn’t have chosen to go anywhere else.”