By Carlos Jimenez (@carlosjimmenezz):
Overshadowed by football and basketball, SJSU’s women teams have been leading the charge and bringing home the trophies in recent time.
Last season, softball won its first Mountain West Championship, gymnastics won its second Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Championship and tennis won the Mountain West Championship. This season, women’s soccer won its first Mountain West regular season title.
SJSU gymnastics hosted the championship tournament and having that advantage along with standout individual performances proved key to their success.
“The gymnasts were in a zone,” said gymnastics head coach Wayne Wright. “I’ve never seen some of the kids do what they did that meet. If anytime you want something like that to happen, you want it to be at a championship meet.”
In the championship tournament, senior Haleigh Shepard had the highest score in vault with a 9.825. Current sophomore Taylor Chan was tied for the highest score in floor with a 9.875.
The softball team, which is without a stadium, used the classic underdog moniker to fuel its first ever Mountain West Championship season.
“[It] shows the kind of players we recruit,” said softball head coach Peter Turner. “[They] could have made every excuse not to win.”
A second place finish in the Mountain West last season for the women’s soccer team provided the right amount of motivation heading into this season.
“This year’s team, they have a little swag and they had a little bit of luck,” said women’s soccer head coach Lauren Hanson.
The women’s soccer team was able to shake off a slow start to the season and go on to win nine of its 11 conference games (9-1-1 MW) en route to its first title.
Wright and Turner believe that a strong coaching staff that has had continuity has been a key factor to the success of the women’s teams.
Turner has been leading the softball team since 2007 while Wright has been at the helm for gymnastics since 2001 and Hanson with the women’s soccer team since 2014.
Longevity is something that men’s sports have been lacking as this year alone, they have seen coaching debuts for basketball and football.
Not having durability with a coaching staff usually does not bode well for a team because of the sudden changes in play style. Furthermore, it does not allow players to develop the level of trust that comes with working with someone for a long time.
“When you are someplace longer, it’s a little easier to build something,” Wright said.
The SJSU women’s teams are also showing promising signs they will continue to compete at a high level.
“New stadium being built, [we] signed a lot of new athletes,” Turner said. “Honestly I see us being contenders until the day I retire which won’t happen for another while.”
Wright believes the gymnastics team has a chance to repeat last season’s success as it has the reigning Mountain West Freshman of the Year Taylor Chan, who along with senior Kaitlin Won, represented the Spartans at the NCAA regional meet in Seattle in spring.
SJSU women’s soccer will lose an all-time great in forward Dorthe Hoppius at the end of the season. But the group did see breakout performances from sophomore forward Jamilecxth Becerra and freshman midfielder Gabriela Hurtado that will make the Hoppius loss easier to cope with.
“We worked really hard on our culture over the course of four years,” Hanson said. “You have to keep believing that that’s going to equal results.”
SJSU’s women’s teams have given the Spartan faithful a lot to cheer about lately and have done well to build for the future.