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Stanford women’s soccer begins their season this week with a home match on Thursday, August 14th against San Francisco at 7:00 PM PT. Below are five questions heading into the season for the Cardinal.
READ: Breaking down the 2025 Stanford Women’s Soccer Schedule
#1. Can Stanford replace Haley Craig’s production in the net? A major reason Stanford was so successful last season and reached the Final Four was the fact that they had Haley Craig as their goalkeeper. Craig averaged 0.78 goals allowed per match last season with a .763 save percentage. This season, redshirt sophomore Alyssa Savig projects to be the starting goalkeeper, but she’ll have to earn the spot as redshirt freshman Kaiya Jota and true freshman Caroline Birkel will look to be ready to go in case she doesn’t perform well enough. It should be interesting to see how things go for the Cardinal in the back of the net and whether or not Savig will be able to secure the starting job.
#2. Can Stanford score with more consistency? Stanford averaged 1.52 goals per match last season, which isn’t terrible, but ideally you’d like to be at 2.0 goals per match or better. Stanford showed they can score goals in bursts, dropping three goals on UC Irvine and San Diego State while pouring on five goals against UC Santa Barbara. Yet despite those offensive explosions, they weren’t able to get to a 2.0 goals per match average. Stanford needs to see if they can get multiple goals in a match with more regularity than they did last season.
#3. How strong of a season will Andrea Kitahata have? Andrea Kitahata is back for her redshirt senior season, majoring in Symbolic Systems, which from my understanding is a blend of Philosophy, Math, and Computer Science. Impressive to be studying that while also leading Stanford in points last season with 24 (9 goals & 6 assists). With this being her fifth season, Kitahata should be looking to ball out. It’ll be fun to see how she does.
#4. Will Stanford make the ACC tournament? Only six teams make the ACC tournament and despite missing it last season, Stanford was still able to reach the Final Four. In that vein, not making the ACC tournament isn’t that big of a deal so long as you have a strong NCAA tournament resume. That said, I think Stanford would like to make the ACC tournament if for no other reason than to prove that they can compete for a league title.
#5. How will Jasmine Aikey bounce back from her season-ending injury? Senior Jasmine Aikey started the first 17 matches of the season last year before going down with a season-ending injury that required her to be in a walking boot. She played a lot at center back/center defender last year due to a need, but once again is listed as a midfielder for this season. It’ll be interesting to see how she performs and whether or not she’ll end up playing more at the midfielder spot, which will give her more of an opportunity to score goals.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Bluesky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Bluesky: @slamdunk406
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