Picking the soccer MVP

• Tweet
• 

The CMU soccer team won the Mid-American Conference Championship on Sunday.

As cliché as it sounds, the key word in that sentence is team.

Here is a team that gave up one goal in MAC play and went 1,238 minutes and 23 seconds without allowing a goal during one stretch.

Five players were voted to the first-team All-MAC, one to the second-team All-MAC and five to the MAC All-Freshmen roster.

However, trying to figure out who on the team was truly the most valuable will just cause the mind to keep wondering.

Junior Shay Mannino was voted the MAC Defensive Player of the Year by the coaches and set a school record for shutouts in a season and over a career. She had a .47 goals-against average, seventh-best in NCAA Division I. But how much credit should be deflected toward the defensive backline?

It is the same backline which limited the shots and chances that Mannino faced.

One would consider sophomore Liesel Toth and freshman Bailey Brandon the leaders of the backline so, perhaps, they could be most valuable players together.

But then you think about the outside defenders.

Clair Horton, Katie Slaughter, Kristen Pelki and Bethany Allports all were strong throughout the season and especially the MAC season and tournament. Horton and Allport were consistent factors on the side of the backline, while Slaughter came in with aggression off the bench.

It was the senior Pelki faced with the challenge of taking over the middle if Toth and Brandon needed a break or moved up offensively. Pelki was given the responsibility of taking over for Brandon when Brandon went down with an injury midway through the second half of the MAC semifinal against Toledo.

Still, as much credit as the defense should receive, how many teams got quality offensive attacks coming through the midfield?

There, you had juniors Jenna Hill and Valerie Prause congesting the middle. Prause won the balls in the air and Hill had a knack for delaying or stepping into a forward at the right time while passing the ball.

One of the keys for CMU and its defense all year has been the idea of, if the CMU controlled the ball, the other team would not get a goal.

It was mainly controlled in the other team’s end and, offensively, it was a new player stepping forward almost weekly.

One week, it was Laura Twidle, the next Molly Gerst, followed by Chelsi Abbot and so on. It seemed right when a team could start keying in on one player from CMU, a different player started scoring goals and creating opportunities.

Fourteen different players scored goals for Central this season, seven of which had two or more goals.

Then, the senior combo of Amanda Waugh and Stephanie Martin seemed to give CMU a calming presence coming off the bench, especially at the end of games.

So the question still remains: who is CMU’s MVP?

Frankly, this team really doesn’t need an MVP.