⚽️ LADY VOLS SOCCER

#3,827
#3,827
CALIFORNIA STORM SIGNS UT MIDFIELDER HANNAH TILLETT

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Sacramento, CA: The California Storm announced today the signing of University of Tennessee midfielder Hannah Tillett. She returns to play in the US after a year with the Icelandic professional team, KR Reykjavík.

“I am extremely excited and appreciative of the opportunity to play out in Sacramento,” said Tillett, a native of Huntington, Indiana. “I have heard nothing but great things about the club and just ready to get started.”

Tillett wracked up accolades with the Lady Vols during her collegiate career:

  • 2021 SEC Tournament Champions
  • 2021 SEC East Championship
  • 2020 SEC East Championship
  • 2019 All-Conference USA
  • 2018 Top Drawer Soccer Freshman Best XI
  • 2018 United Coaches All-Region
  • 2018 Conference USA Freshman of the Year
  • 2018 All-Conference USA
In her senior year, she appeared in 21 games, starting in eight and logging two assists and two goals. Her last goal for the Lady Vols was logged in their victorious SEC Championship match against Arkansas.

Tillett also played for then-WPSL team the Chattanooga Lady Red Wolves, where she won 2021 WPSL Southeastern Conference Most Outstanding Player. With the Lady Red Wolves, she won Southeast Conference Championship titles in 2021 and 2020.

ABOUT CALIFORNIA STORM

The California Storm of the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL) and USL W League is Sacramento’s premiere women’s soccer club. Their mission is to inspire and empower girls by building self-confidence and leadership skills through the game of soccer. California Storm players come from many different backgrounds including NCAA standouts, former national team players, and world-wide recognized professional players. From Ghana to South America and California to New York, athletes from around the world have played for the California Storm. Previous players: 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup Golden Boot winner Brazil’s Sissi and U.S. Women’s National Team world champions Brandi Chastain, Alex Morgan, Leslie Osborne, and Julie Foudy–among others.
 
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#3,828
#3,828
Couple of interesting and surprising transfers the last few days--a midfielder from Boston College and a forward from St. Mary's.
Both will help; how much, is not yet clear, of course.

They are both experienced, obviously, and have played against good collegiate competition
in the ACC (Agresti) and the West Coast Conference (Diaz). We know the ACC, and WCC features Santa Clara (national champ year before last)
and Pepperdine--another excellent program.

Agresti, in particular, was a three-year starter for Boston College, I believe, and
played a lot of minutes. BC has been near the bottom of the very tough ACC for a few years, but anybody who's been a three-year
starter in that league has got qualities. She's a midfielder and has apparently played in different midfield positions. I read that in the last
half of last year, she was switched to attacking midfielder. She had 4 goals and 4 assists as a junior, but fell off to 0 goals and 2 assists
last year.

She is not going to start as our attacking midfielder--Fusco will almost certainly start in that role, but needs to score more than she did
last year, for sure---but the other two/three midfield positions are open to competition among Stayart (who played well in substitute minutes last year), Midgley (limited action last year), Chatterton (who played limited minutes last year but should have played more), Eskin (limited minutes last year but arguable should have started before Nelson on the wing IMO), new transfer Sizzy from Penn, plus Dakota Brown (a promising mid who played limited minutes last year), plus Dipasupil, who has played outside mid on the left. She's been our best free-kick specialist but the rest of her game isn't
anything to get excited about, IMO. And Giselle Washington as well. The coaches desperately need to find a GOOD holding mid in that group or from an incoming frosh, and nobody really jumps out. Washington has the size and body for it--but the rest of her game is best not spoken about. Stayart has the body and the game for the position--but we may need her more in an attacking or central role as she can shoot--and shooting was a problem for us last year. I don't know if Agresti or Sizzy have played holding mid--but I do think Agresti will see a lot of playing time for us, maybe in the 8 position (center mid). She and her twin sister both played for the U.S. U20 national team in 2020, so there is talent. (Agresti's sister was a very well-regarded defender for BC, and I think she would be a graduate transfer player this year as well--but she's not on the BC roster and not sure if she's playing this coming year or not. She'd be good to have!)

As for Diaz, I read that last year as a senior, she scored 6 goals for St. Mary's, which is a mid-level WCC team, not as good as Santa Clara, Peppedine, but a more than respectable program in a good conference. She didn't play much as a junior. She's been on the Mexican national team roster, which speaks well of her qualities. I suspect she will back up Thomas and Simmonds this year, or perhaps could start up front along with those two if we play a 4-3-3. We'll have to see what she sort of skill set she has---but we definitely needed another forward. We essentially had no other forwards after Thomas and Simmonds except Bartholomew, who played very limited minutes last year. So it was crucial to get another forward with some experience. Eskin played some forward last year, but that was a silly decision as she simply isn't in any way a forward at this level.

The crucial tasks for our coaches will be finding players who can slot into the defensive roles vacated by Raines and Burdette and play well. Whoever gets those jobs may not play AS well as Raines and Burdette--but they have play better than decently or we could have problems. On the whole, we will have a roster with a nice mix of talent and experience. We've got talent. The milliion-dollar question is, can the coaches maximize the team's potential by putting the right players in the right positions and building a cohesive unit? They most certainly did not do that last year--pay little attention to the co-SEC East champs PR--and they totally blew a chance to take the program to another level with our national status, recruiting, all of it. Our level went down, we were a mess in our last two games, and then our two best players fled the program. Even without them, our level needs to go up this year. By the end of this next season, IMO, we'll know whether this staff is up to the challenge or not.
 
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#3,830
#3,830
First spring game is tomorrow--I forget the time. Anybody going? Wish I were close enough to go but I'm not...Would love
to get a look at the revamped squad, see who looks good.
 
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#3,831
#3,831
72DD3E9F-25C9-4E2D-B2BB-37B4C6951FB3.jpeg

Admission for all spring matches at Regal Soccer Stadium will be free of charge. Restrooms will be open at the facility, but attendees should be advised that concessions will not be available during these off-season contests.
 
#3,838
#3,838
Vol Soccer just tweeted this out: We won 3-0. No details, however.

Of course we've learned that you can't take too much from spring matches. I think coaches play a lot of different players,
probably move players around, etc. A lot of experimentation. We were impressive last Spring--I believe we won all of our games
and beat two solid/good ACC teams in Va. Tech and Clemson. Pensky was still the coach, then left sometime after the spring games.

 
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#3,840
#3,840
I'm not sure what's going on with Twitter--except for the obvious fact that the weird, egotistical Elon Musk seems determined to ruin the service and his investment. The Vols have signed a German international soccer player named Linette Hofmann, who's been playing for Hoffenheim's junior squad and has had a cup of coffee with the club's senior club, which plays in the Bundesliga and just defeated Wolfsburg, though it tends to be a mid-tier or lower-mid-tier team in that competitive Germany league.

Twitter won't let me embed the Vol Soccer tweet for some reason--and it seems that some tweets above have mysteriously disappeared. Bizarre.

In any case, Hofmann is an 18-year-old defender, though it seems she's played a bit of midfield or even forward as well. She's been on a couple of German youth national teams, and from what I've seen of her, looks pretty impressive--good size, athleticism, skills. A company that specializes in placing foreign players with American colleges has the following video highlights of her play. They haven't ID'd her in each clip with arrows or circles as we see with most highlights, which is annoying and makes it hard at times to discern which player she is---but one can tell in most of the clips and she plays well. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see her starting from the get-go. The downside of getting good international players is that it's rare for them to stay for more than a year or two. Some do--FSU (blah) has had a few internationals who stayed for the full four years. We had a French midfielder with talent maybe three years ago. She started for a year and then went back to playing pro soccer in France. Our women's swimming team had a tremendous freshman swimmer from Ireland last year who won three events (and the Swimmer of the Meet) award at last year's SEC Championship and was one reason we won the title. This year, for reasons unknown, she decided not to return to college and we weren't able to repeat as SEC champs. So it goes..but this looks like a good signing.

german soccer player linette hofmann - Google Search
 
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#3,841
#3,841
turbovol said:
I'm not sure what's going on with Twitter--except for the obvious fact that the weird, egotistical Elon Musk seems determined to ruin the service and his investment. The Vols have signed a German international soccer player named Linette Hofmann, who's been playing for Hoffenheim's junior squad and has had a cup of coffee with the club's senior club, which plays in the Bundesliga and just defeated Wolfsburg, though it tends to be a mid-tier or lower-mid-tier team in that competitive Germany league.

Twitter won't let me embed the Vol Soccer tweet for some reason--and it seems that some tweets above have mysteriously disappeared. Bizarre.

In any case, Hofmann is an 18-year-old defender, though it seems she's played a bit of midfield or even forward as well. She's been on a couple of German youth national teams, and from what I've seen of her, looks pretty impressive--good size, athleticism, skills. A company that specializes in placing foreign players with American colleges has the following video highlights of her play. They haven't ID'd her in each clip with arrows or circles as we see with most highlights, which is annoying and makes it hard at times to discern which player she is---but one can tell in most of the clips and she plays well. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see her starting from the get-go. The downside of getting good international players is that it's rare for them to stay for more than a year or two. Some do--FSU (blah) has had a few internationals who stayed for the full four years. We had a French midfielder with talent maybe three years ago. She started for a year and then went back to playing pro soccer in France. Our women's swimming team had a tremendous freshman swimmer from Ireland last year who won three events (and the Swimmer of the Meet) award at last year's SEC Championship and was one reason we won the title. This year, for reasons unknown, she decided not to return to college and we weren't able to repeat as SEC champs. So it goes..but this looks like a good signing.

german soccer player linette hofmann - Google Search
Click to expand...
I’ve seen quite a few that have mysteriously become “unavailable”. I’m thinking screen shots moving forward.
 
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#3,842
#3,842
turbovol said:
I'm not sure what's going on with Twitter--except for the obvious fact that the weird, egotistical Elon Musk seems determined to ruin the service and his investment. The Vols have signed a German international soccer player named Linette Hofmann, who's been playing for Hoffenheim's junior squad and has had a cup of coffee with the club's senior club, which plays in the Bundesliga and just defeated Wolfsburg, though it tends to be a mid-tier or lower-mid-tier team in that competitive Germany league.

Twitter won't let me embed the Vol Soccer tweet for some reason--and it seems that some tweets above have mysteriously disappeared. Bizarre.

In any case, Hofmann is an 18-year-old defender, though it seems she's played a bit of midfield or even forward as well. She's been on a couple of German youth national teams, and from what I've seen of her, looks pretty impressive--good size, athleticism, skills. A company that specializes in placing foreign players with American colleges has the following video highlights of her play. They haven't ID'd her in each clip with arrows or circles as we see with most highlights, which is annoying and makes it hard at times to discern which player she is---but one can tell in most of the clips and she plays well. Wouldn't surprise me at all to see her starting from the get-go. The downside of getting good international players is that it's rare for them to stay for more than a year or two. Some do--FSU (blah) has had a few internationals who stayed for the full four years. We had a French midfielder with talent maybe three years ago. She started for a year and then went back to playing pro soccer in France. Our women's swimming team had a tremendous freshman swimmer from Ireland last year who won three events (and the Swimmer of the Meet) award at last year's SEC Championship and was one reason we won the title. This year, for reasons unknown, she decided not to return to college and we weren't able to repeat as SEC champs. So it goes..but this looks like a good signing.

german soccer player linette hofmann - Google Search
Click to expand...

9D38E218-3CEA-434A-B7C5-AEB673ED5A71.jpegA809630F-27D9-48B0-A814-1D26DCC77D7A.jpeg
 
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