Last week, with the end of the season, three members of the Villanova women’s soccer team were awarded all-Big East honors for their performances throughout the semester. Senior midfielder Susanna Soderman finished on the First Team, junior goalie Hannah Dickinson land- ed on the Second Team and senior defender Myla McLeod ended on the Third Team.
For Dickinson, these accolades come in her first season in the Big East after transferring from University of Southern California (USC).
Despite being ranked as high as 11th in the nation during her time as a Trojan, the Seattle native decided it was time for a change as she moved across the country to become a Wildcat.
“Last year when I was looking to transfer, a big part of the school I wanted to go to was the community feel and team camaraderie,” Dickinson said. “So when I came on a visit, I immediately felt at home, not just with the campus and how beautiful it is, but with how welcoming everyone was. I also think Coach Azem does a really good job at making it feel as though it’s not a business transaction, because realistically, I’m looking for a school which I want to spend the rest of my eligibility at, and they’re looking for a player. So it is somewhat like a transaction, but when I came it more felt as though it was like a normal positive interaction where I felt like they had my best interests at heart, and so that was a big part of it.”
In addition to being named to the Second Team, Dickinson was named to the Big East Weekly Honor Roll three times throughout the season, finishing second in the Big East for saves with 89 on the season. Yet, despite her talent in the net, it was not always a position she wanted to play.
“It kind of got thrown at me a little bit,” Dickinson said. “I broke my leg when I was in fourth grade, and I still wanted to play soccer. I also naturally have pretty good hand eye coordination, so I was sometimes thrown in the goal a lot. After that I still wanted to play on a good soccer team so the way I could do that was by playing goalie. And then I eventually grew to like it later on.”
Now, in her third year, Dickinson continues to improve even after moving to the more competitive Big East where her skills were tested throughout the season. In her last year as a Trojan she had 35 saves with a .745 save percentage. In her first season as a Wildcat, she stopped 89 goals with an increased save percentage of .800.
“The Big East, in my opinion, is much more physical than the conference I was playing in before,” Dickinson said. “PAC 12 was very much technical, and Big East is also techni- cal, but there’s a lot less fear of hitting others. So I’ve gotten knocked a few times so far this year, which hadn’t really happened to me before. There’s also the competitiveness within the league, there’s not a lot of teams that are at the bottom. Everyone’s pretty close together, which makes for a really fun competition and race for the postseason.”
Despite having the right components, the team was unable to execute and were unable to make the postseason. This did not necessarily come from losses, but from ties, going 5-7-6, due in large part to struggles in converting on the offensive end.
“I think scoring goals is a big one,” Dickinson said. “That’s what we talked about a lot this year. Because you can’t win if you don’t score. And playing defense for 90 minutes is truly, truly, very difficult. I think our defense grew a lot this season, but we’re still not where we need to be. In our last stretch of three games, I think we let up almost double that we had before. That’s not acceptable for our stan- dards. This spring is really huge for us and our team and people individually, to work on their technical skills, but also tactically, work as a team, because we are very young, and we haven’t played together really, before this year. And so it kind of is only going upwards, which is good.”
