Posted on: Monday, March 17, 2003

UH women lose spring soccer fling to Nebraska

By Leila Wai
Special to the Advertiser

For the University of Hawai'i women's soccer team, spring training — the equivalent to football's off-season training session — is a chance to work on things it is unable to do during the regular season.

This year, it enjoys a luxury most college teams around the nation have during the spring — solid competition.

Yesterday, No. 13 Nebraska became the first of three Division I programs that will visit the UH practice facility and play an exhibition match. The Cornhuskers beat Hawai'i, 2-0.

"We have some of the same challenges as Hawai'i, in that there's not a lot of teams around us, so we are really aggressive in our spring, trying to challenge the best possible teams that we can," Nebraska coach John Walker said.

"We are just trying to challenge the players, so we train hard," he said. "It is a time for us, historically in our program, that we've made a lot of development. We work a lot on individual skills, and we are very demanding."

The Rainbow Wahine usually play local high school club or women's league teams. This year they also will host No. 22 Southern California March 21 and Oregon March 25. Both matches will be played at the Rainbow Wahine practice facility, starting at 4 p.m.

Yesterday, Nebraska scored on goals by Iman Haynes and Nikki Baker, both on assists from Jenna Cooper.

The match gave Hawai'i a chance to see how it compared to a team that made it to the Sweet 16 the past seven years.

"We're working on how we want to play this fall. Many of the things we are working on, work," Hawai'i coach Pinsoom Tenzing said. "If we continue playing like this we are going to be fine. I didn't see many weaknesses.

"We want to play hard, we want to play to win, and we want to have fun. I got everybody to play."

Natasha Kai, the 2002 Western Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year, said that she thought the 'Bows "needed work on everything in general," but pointed out that they don't have all of their players.

Hawai'i was without two of its three starting forwards from last season: freshman Carmen Calpo and junior Arlene Devitt. Calpo, who set the freshman assist record with six, decided to leave the team after the end of the season and will transfer to East Carolina.

"It was done in a timely matter. I don't know why she's going. She said that she was happy but she just wants to expand her horizons," Tenzing said.

Devitt, a three-time all-WAC selection, is concentrating on her academics, Tenzing said.