As a season of "bad juju" nears an end, the Hawaii soccer team has two more chances to break the spell.
Rainbow Wahine coach Michele Nagamine can only shake her head at some of the occurrences over the course of a 6-10 season to date that concludes with a two-match Big West road trip starting Thursday at UC Irvine.
The season began with issues regarding field conditions at Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium and while Nagamine has seen progress in the team’s level of play, various misfortunes aligned to leave the Wahine at 1-5 in the Big West and out of postseason contention.
With two matches left, they’ll try to craft a more upbeat finish with Thursday’s match in Irvine, Calif., and Sunday’s finale at Cal State Northridge.
"I call it the season of bad juju," Nagamine said. "It’s been one thing after another. … From the very beginning it’s been a tough season and the fact that we’re playing well doesn’t make not getting the results easier to swallow.
"I can’t even believe some of the stuff that’s happened this season, but what we’ve chosen to do is just focus on trying to send our seniors off on the best note possible, to try to get back on track and set ourselves up for this spring."
UH’s previous road trip began with a loss at UC Santa Barbara in which the Gauchos netted the winning goal with nine seconds left. Two losses later, the Wahine were eliminated from the race for one of four berths in the Big West tournament with a contentious senior night loss to UC Davis last Friday.
The match turned after UH goalie Erica Young saved a penalty kick only to have the Aggies awarded another on the scramble for the rebound. The second attempt got through and was the difference in a 2-1 UC Davis win.
"I don’t think it’s for a lack of effort. We’ve outplayed many of our opponents in the games we’ve lost. Getting two penalty kicks in three seconds. Just weird, weird stuff," Nagamine said.
"This team has been one to overcome a lot of adversity and although we didn’t finish where we wanted to finish league-wise for the Big West tournament there’s a lot of good that can still come out of these last two games."
The Wahine end their season against two teams looking to extend theirs. UC Irvine must win both of its matches this weekend to stay alive for the conference tournament. Cal State Northridge can clinch a berth with a win on Sunday.
Although UH can play spoiler in both matches, "we’re not going to worry about jacking other people up as we are trying to fix ourselves," Nagamine said.
The road trip will end the careers of six seniors, Alexis Colacchio, Korinne Estrada, Ashley Haruki, Hayden Gibson, Krystal Pascua and Olivia Stanford. Nagamine said Pascua’s status for the matches is in question due to an injury suffered on senior night.
