SAN DIEGO - San Diego State opens the 2023 regular season this week with two home matches. The Aztecs will be taking on Sacred Heart on Thursday at 7 p.m. PT and UTEP on Sunday at 10 a.m. PT. Both matches will be the first time in program history that the two teams have faced each other.
Aztecs Notes
Head Coach Mike Friesen begins his 17th campaign leading the Mountain West's most dominant women's soccer program. Friesen has guided his squad to ten Mountain West championships (five tournament and five regular season), and five NCAA Tournament appearances, both the most among any current league head coach. Now in his 17th season of conference play, Friesen has an 98-34-18 record. His 98 league victories are the most by any head coach in Mountain West history (the inaugural season of the MW was in 1999).
Friesen's 172 victories (172-111-43) since the start of the 2007 season, the year he took control of the program, are the most by any current coach in the Mountain West and rank second in league history (Jennifer Rockwood, BYU, 190 victories). Colorado College's Geoff Bennett's 150 victories in the last 16 seasons ranks second among current MW head coaches.
The Aztecs are opening the season at home for the eighth time in 10 seasons. In season openers at home San Diego State is 14-7-1. Now in its 35th campaign, SDSU has a 20-14-1 record overall in season openers.
San Diego State is picked to finish in second place in the MW coaches' preseason poll. This marks the 13th time in 14 seasons the Aztecs have been picked to finish in either first or second place. The only time SDSU was lower than second place in the preseason poll in the last 13 years was in 2019, a year in which the Aztecs were predicted to finish fourth. That team went 10-9-1, shared the Mountain West regular-season title at 8-2-0, and reached the championship game of the league tournament.
Having won five of the last 10 regular-season titles, not including the 2020 season in which the league was dividedinto two divisions and the Aztecs earned the West Division title, SDSU finds itself not the favorite in the eyes of the conference's head coaches for just the third time in the last nine years.
The Aztecs have won nine of the last 20 MW trophies (regular season and tournament), all of which have come under the direction of head coach Mike Friesen. In total, the 17th-year head coach has guided San Diego State to 11 conference titles.
Player Notes
SDSU brings back eight starters from last season, including their top two goal scorers in Emma Gaines-Ramos and Denise Castro who scored six and seven goals apiece.
San Diego State returns all four players who earned all-conference honors in 2022. Denise Castro and Emma Gaines-Ramos in attack earned first-team all-confernece, Kiera Utush was placed on the second team, while Grace Goins returns at centerbak and was named to the all-newcomers team in 2022.
Kiera Utush enters her fifth season at San Diego State. The Rocklin, California native has been a force along the backline and has made a total of 72 appearances (59 starts) for the Scarlet and Black.
Overall, 12 players scored the Aztecs' 28 goals last season. Eight of them are back in 2023 and account for 22 of the team's tallies from last season. In addition, seven of the 11 players that produced the squads 24 assists are back
Alexa Madueno returns in goal for San Diego State. The redshirt junior from Woodland, California is currently ranked in the top eight in five different categories in the SDSU record book entering the 2023 season. Madueno is currently tied for third in career saves with 207, is fifth on the single-season saves list with 92 shots stopped during the 2022 season, sixth in career shutouts with 16, eighth in career goals against average at 1.36, and is tied for tenth in since-season shutouts with seven shutouts recorded during the 2022 season.
Aztecs Host UTEP Sunday Morning
