Overview:
Leroy Zeller enters his senior season on the United Soccer Coaches’ Watch List for NCAA Goalkeeper of the Year
A quarter-century of coaching has taught UC Santa Barbara’s Tim Vom Steeg that it takes a deep team to make a deep run in the college soccer playoffs.
And he’s feeling enraptured by the depth of this year’s Gauchos.
They will open their season with home matches on Friday against Oral Roberts and Monday against the University of Pacific. Both contests will kick off on Harder Stadium’s Meredith Field at 7 p.m.
“I’m most excited about this group because of the depth of our roster,” Vom Steeg said. “Yes, I have starters who are very good players. But I’m really pleased with what we’ve been able to do in adding the next group, and that’s why I think we’ll have a successful season.
“We’ll be able to manage minutes a little better. We won’t have to rely on our key guys for a big chunk of the season. As last year showed, it may take that second group of players to win a championship.”
Vom Steeg has guided the Gauchos to the NCAA Tournament 14 times in 24 seasons. They made the NCAA final in 2004, won it all in 2006, and advanced to the NCAA Elite 8 as recently as 2019.
They missed last year’s postseason, however, after their roster was reduced by injuries.
They finished with an overall record of 10-4-6, losing at UC Riverside in both their regular-season finale and in the Big West Conference Tournament championship match.
“I thought my team last year was really good,” Vom Steeg said. “We had a great opening to our season, and things were going great, and then I lose six starters.
“You can’t control that. Then you finish the year just kind of surviving and trying to find a way to win each game.”
A Header Above The Rest
Salvador “Chava” Aguilar, an athletic 6-foot-2 junior forward, is UCSB’s top returning scorer despite having played less than half the season. He scored six goals during the 2021 season and had notched five in the first nine matches of last season.
His scores included a high-leaping, acrobatic header to beat Cal Poly with just 12 seconds remaining.
His fifth and final goal came during the third minute of a Sept. 24 match against No. 5 Stanford. He was lost for the rest of the season, however, after suffering a season-ending knee injury during the second half of that match.
“Chava is cleared but we’re going to take it easy with him,” Vom Steeg pointed out. “We’re not rushing him back.”
Third-team All-American Finn Ballard McBride, the Big West Conference Offensive Player of the Year, graduated after scoring a team-best 13 goals last season.
He plans to take advantage of the extra season the NCAA allows because of the COVID-19 pandemic and play as a graduate student at Kentucky. The Wildcats advanced to the NCAA Sweet-16 team last year and were ranked No. 3 nationally in the recent United Soccer Coaches’ preseason poll.
What the transfer portal has taketh away, however, it has also giveth back to UCSB with a pair of imports from Denmark: junior Mikkel Goeling and sophomore Nicolas Hald Willumsen.
A pair of junior college transfers — forward Henrique Bueno from Tyler, Tex. and defender Haruki Utsumi from El Camino College of Alondra Park, Ca. — add to UCSB’s depth.
“Mikkel, Nicolas and Haruki will step in to help fill the departure of All-Big West performers Sam Fletcher, Finn Ballard McBride and Henry Davies,” Vom Steeg said. “Henrique will add a left-sided attacking presence that we lost with Rigoberto Barragan’s graduation.”
Great Danes
Goeling, a 6-3 midfielder, made the NCAA Division 2 All-Southeast Region Team after scoring nine goals with five assists at Young Harris College in Georgia. Willumsen, a 6-2 forward, scored three goals for Division 1 Xavier last year.
“Nico will be in there first while we bring Chava back slowly, but he’s also very, very good,” Vom Steeg said. “At some point — probably sooner rather than later — you’re going to see situations where both are on the field together.
“It’ll be interesting with twin towers out there.”
Three other cogs to last year’s attack — forward Alexis Ledoux and midfielders Nemo Philipp and Lucas Gonzalez — also missed time because of injuries.
“This was a team that I thought would do damage, and then in the span of two weeks I lost Alexis, I lost Chava, I lost Nemo,” Vom Steeg said. “Lucas hung on a little bit, but we lost four of our best attacking players right at the start of conference.
“Alexis was absolutely on fire the first five or six games and then got hurt.”
Gonzalez, a red-shirt junior, led UCSB last year with six assists and he added two goals to earn All-Big West Conference second-team honors. He is the only player remaining from the Gauchos’ NCAA Elite 8 roster of 2019, although he was lost for that season after getting injured in the opener against UNLV.
Vom Steeg hopes to keep him on the field longer by moving from center-mid to an outside position.
“Lucas is the mainstay, but he does best when he’s not the focal point,” he said. “We’ll ask more of him, and he will do it, and then three or four games later we have a hamstring, or something else.
“We’ve basically swapped Nemo for Lucas and moved Nemo into the middle.”
Philipp, a senior midfielder, received All-Big West honorable mention last year with three goals and three assists.
“Nemo was playing hurt the whole second half of the season, but he was very good at controlling the game,” Vom Steeg said. “He has a big body (6-foot-2) and he’s very mature.
“He can really read the tempo of the game.”
Out of Africa
David Danquaf, a 5-6 sophomore, will give the Gauchos a dynamic attacker after sitting out last season with a knee injury. He was twice nominated for Tennessee’s Gatorade High School Player of the Year Award.
“David was probably one of the top-five recruits in the country two years ago,” Vom Steeg pointed out. “He was supposed to go to North Carolina and we were fortunate that it didn’t work out for him there.
“He’s originally from Ghana, and we have a long tradition of players from Ghana doing very well in our program. He’s another piece that, at this point, will play behind Nemo. If we need to give Nemo some time off, or if something happens, not many teams in the country are bringing in a player like David, with his ability.”
Also back are juniors Rene Pacheco and Pablo Figueroa, as well sophomore midfielder Filip Basili, who was voted to last year’s Big West All-Freshman Team.
“Rene and Pablo are both in their third years,” Vom Steeg said. “They’re both right behind Lucas and Alexis, but not really behind.
“You could easily put those two in any game and not miss a beat. Now you have four players in those two positions.
“We need the juniors and seniors that are just right there, and fortunately, we’ve got depth, and they can step into a game and help you win.”
The Gauchos were picked by the coaches to unseat UC Riverside as league champion. They also voted Ledoux, Gonzalez and goalkeeper Leroy Zeller to this year’s preseason all-league team.
Guarding the Goal
Zeller, a 6-5 senior from Zupich, Germany, shared last year’s Big West Conference Goalkeeper of the Year Award after registering seven shutouts. He ranks seventh in program history with 16 in his career.
The United Soccer Coaches named him as one of six Division 1 “Goalkeepers to Watch” for this season.
“Given the dynamics of professional soccer, a player like Leroy would’ve gone somewhere by now,” Vom Steeg said. “We’ve been fortunate to keep most of these guys for their duration … Players like a Lucas and an Alexis.
“They enjoy playing here in Santa Barbara, they generally want to get their degree before moving on, and Leroy is the same way. He’ll graduate this fall.
“I think he’s the best goalie on the West Coast and he’s undoubtedly top three in the country. It does allow you to do a lot of things in the back, and we’re also expanding Leroy’s role.”
He’ll be backed up by 6-4 senior David Mitzner.
Claine Plummer, who’s worked as the goalkeeper coach for both the national team’s U19 and U14 programs, has joined Vom Steeg’s staff to serve in the same role. Plummer worked with his son, Justin Vom Steeg, in the Los Angeles Galaxy program, as well as with former Gaucho Dan Kennedy with Chivas USA.
Johnny Whallon has also come aboard as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator after working at Westmont College for the last decade.
The Gaucho defense returns 6-5 senior Timon Windisch, 6-1 junior Caden Vom Steeg, 5-8 senior Jorge Aldana, 5-7 junior Kenny Villatoro, and 5-10 sophomore Keaton Fargo.
Johannes Vedin, a 6-2 junior, is also back after sitting out last season as an injury redshirt.
UCSB has added freshman Andrew Kamienski, a highly regarded 6-3 center back from Long Beach’s Saint Anthony High School, to the back line.
“Our center back situation should be a lot better because we actually have four of them,” coach Vom Steeg said. “I’m not going to run out of center backs like I did last year.
“We were scrambling last year when Johannes got hurt. It was like, ‘OK, where do you go next?’”
UCSB has a wealth of depth in the midfield with redshirt juniors Nalu Mack and Miguel Tostado; sophomores Eddie Villeda, Dominick Phanco, and Isaiah Barber, and freshman Carl Mollerberg, a top recruit from Sweden.
Freshman recruits Kaden Standish and Kavi Krishnan both scored goals for UCSB in its exhibition match against Westmont College last week. Freshman Ethan Senter is also a top recruit for the midfield.
“Our hope is that we keep the key guys healthy this year,” Vom Steeg said. “But from a recruiting standpoint, we have played the game that, ‘If this player goes out, who do we have who can step in and help us keep going?’
“We feel good about the position are depth has put us in.”