It is not exactly true that waiting for the University of Hawai'i at Hilo women's soccer team to give up a goal is like waiting for Halley's Comet to pass on a Friday the 13th of a leap year.

But Big Island soccer afficionados can be forgiven for a bit of hyperbole given the recent performance of the Lady Vulcans, who have yet to allow a goal in three Pacific West games this season.

So stingy is the UH-Hilo defense, in fact, that recent victims Hawai'i Pacific, Chaminade and Brigham Young-Hawai'i managed just seven shots on goal — combined.

"The success we've had so far comes from how our defense has played," said UH-Hilo head coach Travis Clarke.

The Lady Vulcans are 5-4 and 3-0 in conference play, already bettering their 4-12-1 record from the program's inaugural season last year.

The improvement is particularly impressive considering that as many as nine freshmen are liable to be in the starting lineup.

The infusion of young talent was crucial for the growth of the program and, it can safely be assumed, for Clarke's mental health.

Clarke, a former assistant coach with Santa Barbara City College and director of coaching at a Southern California soccer club, was hired just a month before the start of last season. He accepted the start-up job despite the fact that the program had no office, no practice field, no uniforms, not even players to put on the uniforms.

"I'd literally see girls in the lunch line who looked sort of athletic and I'd ask them if they wanted to play soccer," Clarke said. "Some said yes, some said no. On our first away trip, some of them didn't know that we'd be traveling. They thought it was an intramural kind of thing."

Determined not to repeat the frustrations of that first season, Clarke and assistants Alana Cabatu and Ian Hatch hit the recruiting trail hard.

The result was a 23-player recruiting class (including walk-ons) long on potential and short on experience.

Clarke had reliable returnees in senior forward Karen Weatherby, and junior defenders Healani Leite-Ah Yo and Jessica Winslow, but the sheer number of new faces proved a challenge.

"When we played Seattle Pacific (the first game of the season), the girls didn't know each other's names or how they played."

Making matters worse, Clarke and his staff weren't able to implement their playing system until the conference opener two weeks ago.

"We would teach them what to do in practice, but they weren't ready to use it in a game," Clarke said. "We didn't have a system in place until we played BYUH. Up until that point, we just put them out there and they just played."

In practice, they immersed themselves in Clarke's system of zone defense, a four-midfielder alignment and aggressive offensive play from the backfield.

"You can see the evolution of the system in every game," Clarke said. "You can literally see (the team) get better every minute on the field."

Key to the team's early success has been freshman Ashley Werner, a late signee out of Waiakea High School in Hilo.

"We were searching for an outside back that could attack," Clarke explained. "(Werner) played forward in high school and she grew up her whole life with an offensive mentality."

UH-Hilo hasn't surrendered a goal since the first half of its match against Concordia on Sept. 3. Since then, the Lady Vulcans have shut out HPU (1-0 in overtime), Chaminade (2-0) and chief rival BYUH (1-0).

Clarke was especially encouraged by his team's performance against BYUH because it was forced to play without freshman forward Jani Carmona (a member of the Mexican under-20 squad) and Leite-Ah Yo.

"Now, if BYUH beats everybody except us, and we were without two of our best players, I'd say our potential is unlimited," Clarke said.

Clarke and his staff have rallied around the goal of trying to sign three or four of the top high school players each year.

"If we can do that," he said, "we can win a national championship."

LET'S GO STREAKING

There's just no keeping up with the HPU men's cross country team this season. The Sea Warriors placed three runners — Brandon Laan, Jens Munk Nielsen and Esben Dalgaard — in the top five of the HPU Invitational to claim their sixth consecutive victory.

HPU finished with 37 points, followed by BYUH (41), UH-Hilo (42) and Chaminade (96).

UH-Hilo won the women's division, finishing with 46 points. BYUH came in second (51), followed by the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (57) and HPU (61).

SERVING TWO

BYUH's Maggie Deng and Elwen Li are participating in this week's ITA National Small College Championships in Mobile, Ala.

Li will compete in the singles championship and will join Deng in the doubles championship.

Li beat Deng for the Wilson/ITA West Regionals singles title last month in Pomona, Calif. The pair then defeated HPU's Tinka Mihova and Elena Hudzikova for the doubles title.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.