With two games remaining, the women’s soccer team is already mathematically eliminated from any chance of advancing to even the ACC Tournament.
That’s never a good sign for a program, especially considering the coach of the team is in her 10th season at the helm.
Granted, 21 players are freshmen and sophomores. It’s hard to imagine a team that young doing much better than the 6-8-3 record it currently boasts.
But more should be expected of coach Laura Kerrigan. She has had plenty of time to produce a winner, but yet again, her team isn’t going anywhere. Not once has the Wolfpack gone to the NCAA Tournament with Kerrigan as coach. Just because this year’s team is inexperienced doesn’t explain what went wrong in the other nine seasons.
It’s unfortunate because Kerrigan, a two-time All-American as a player at N.C. State, is one of the program’s legends — it was her penalty kick that won the inaugural ACC championship game against North Carolina in 1988.
In her four-year playing career, her teams made the NCAA Tournament each season, advancing to the national championship game once.
She probably envisioned reliving that success as a coach when she took over her alma mater for her first head coaching job in 1998.
But instead, it’s year 10, and the Pack sits at 0-7-1 in conference play. Kerrigan’s teams have yet to win more than three ACC games or amass more than 10 wins in a season.
She’s won 13 conference games in 77 tries, which equals an abysmal winning percentage of 16.88 percent.
Her teams have been average at best, compiling a 79-93-16 record.
“She knows from this point into the future she’s got to show improvement as do all our coaches,” Athletics Director Lee Fowler said.
Fowler said the set goal for the soccer programs is to advance to NCAA Tournaments.
But for some reason Kerrigan can’t take her team to one.
One reason might be facilities; few will argue that Method Road Soccer Stadium is a decrepit and unattractive venue.
“I couldn’t expect a whole lot more from [the soccer coaches] with the facilities we had,” Fowler said. “So now that we do have facilities, I expect an uptake, and we need to be playing to go to the NCAAs every year — not one out of two or three.”
A big reason behind the creation of the new stadium at Derr Track is it will have light fixtures to allow night games. Method Road doesn’t, and it hurts from a recruiting standpoint.
“We can’t play at night, and we can’t get recruits to come in because we’re playing in the afternoon still,” Fowler said.
These all sound like good enough excuses, but men’s coach George Tarantini has dealt with those very same facilities, and as recently as 2005 he had a top-15 team.
A few weeks ago, Kerrigan talked about an outside chance of making the NCAA Tournament. With those dreams now dashed, she must hope Fowler decides to give her another year to finally reach postseason play.
“We will meet at the end of the year and talk about the last five years, what she thinks she has to do for it to get better in the future,” Fowler said.
“But I wouldn’t tell you at this point because I haven’t met with her or talked to the administrator, Jon Fagg, that’s over her. We will meet shortly after the season ends and have those discussions as we do [with] all our fall sports people.”
If Fowler does keep Kerrigan, the pressure is on for 2008. Anything less than an NCAA Tournament bid is another baby step under Kerrigan — and there’s no reason a program should still be taking baby steps after a coach’s 10th year.
