Young, eager and hungry: Oakdale girls soccer chasing success with youth, depth
The Oakdale girls soccer team is in the middle of a youth movement.
The Mustangs (10-9-1) have seven freshmen on the roster and four of them start. Four of their top five goal-scorers are underclassmen. While they do not have the experience of last year’s team, which got 29 total goals and 30 total assists from its senior class, that might not be a bad thing.
“Being younger makes you want to work harder,” said sophomore Dakota Burford, the team’s goals and assists leader in her second varsity season. “I think a lot of our underclassmen are some of our hardest workers because they want to prove themselves not only to the audience and the league, but to the team. They want to be contributors despite how old they are.”
Friday in a Valley Oak League game against East Union, the first place Mustangs’ youth didn’t show. Players were poised with the ball, controlled possession and coasted to another league win, beating the Lancers 4-0.
Freshman Kaia Cox scored twice Friday and freshman Ashlyn Splettstoesser and Kyleigh Melconain added one goal apiece. In goal senior Avery Alves and freshman Cassidy Mitchell combined to shut out the Lancers.
The Mustangs secured their fifth league win (5-0-1) and their fifth VOL shutout. They are outscoring league opponents 17-1.
“This year, it was like, OK everybody left, we gotta try to rebuild,” Melconain, one of the team’s six seniors said. “It’s exciting to see that we’re still going strong and winning games.”
Burford leads the team with 14 goals and seven assists but it’s more than a one-person show. Cox is just behind her with nine goals and four other players have at least three goals on the season. Sophomore Shelby Mitchell and senior Jocelyn Gradilla are second on the team with five assists apiece.
“The biggest thing that stands out to me is this is the most depth I’ve had in a very long time,” head coach Kico Monares said. “In the past, we’ve had 12-13 good players but this year we have a roster of 24 and are very deep across the board at different positions.”
They have players that do some of everything, whether it shows up on the stat sheet or not. Melconain has scored three goals but also takes corner kicks, executes most throw-ins and leads the defense with fellow senior Lyndee Cox. Freshman Ceci Cotton and Gradilla, who Monares says is the most versatile player on the team, are also key contributors to the Mustangs’ success. Friday night, Gradilla played four different positions.
“We have a lot of versatile, hungry, eager-to-learn players,” Monares said.
Monares once again scheduled a tough non-league schedule but that’s not what the Mustangs focused on.
They’re working on securing back-to-back-to-back Valley Oak League titles. With Friday’s win, the Mustangs secured their third straight 10-win season. A good league record secures a top seed in the playoffs.
They went 6-6 in non-league games. But they learned valuable lessons.
“Preseason we went against some really good schools and it was an eye-opener as a newer team,” Burford said. “It was like, ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’ Even though we were going against bigger schools, we knew league was going to be just as hard. Yes, we’re excited because it’s a new team but we’ve also got to stay focused.”
The Mustangs hope for another deep playoff run. After reaching the section semifinals two seasons ago, they played for a blue banner last season but fell short against Rio Americano.
“The standard now is a VOL championship and a blue banner,” Monares said. “Our seniors set that standard. We want to compete for a VOL championship, we want to make a deep playoff run and our ultimate goal is that blue banner.”
This team feels like it hasn’t played its best yet. They don’t want to peak now. But heading into the second half of league play Wednesday against Manteca.
“We’ve had some games where it’s like I don’t know how we won that,” Melconain said, reflecting on the first half of league play.”
Monares agreed with his captain, “There’s so much room for improvement for us. The upside of having a lot of young people is they’re eager to learn.”
This story was originally published January 18, 2025 at 7:37 AM.
