Cowgirls Kicking Up New Culture

By Jim Gazzolo

Alexsis Cable came to McNeese looking to turn the women’s soccer program around.

The first-time head coach had hoped to lead the Cowgirls to a .500 season after back-to-back four-win campaigns.

Instead, she finds her team becoming the Southland Conference's surprise, and she is one victory away from making history.

The 8-5-2 Cowgirls will look to keep the streak going Thursday as they host Incarnate Word. With a win, Cable will tie the program's record for most wins by a first-year coach, with three regular-season games remaining.

“I actually didn’t even know that,” Cable said when asked how that felt. “I’m glad someone told me.”

McNeese went 8-26-5 over the last two years, with Cable as the third head coach in that span. She came to Lake Charles after five seasons as an assistant at North Texas.

However, her soccer roots run deep in the Southland. She played at Southeastern and began her coaching career as a grad assistant at Northwestern State.

She spent two years at Nicholls before North Texas, where she served one year as an assistant and was interim head coach during her second season. 

Knowing the league has helped fuel the turnaround, but getting to know her players has, too. Cable says meetings with the players, especially the ones returning, have been key to team chemistry.

“We had a lot of individual meetings in the spring,” said Cable. “We picked their brains and asked them what they wanted out of this season.”

That helped convince 14 players to stay despite the coaching change.

“The fact that we kept 14 together helped,” said Cable. “It was easy to build around them.”

It also got everyone, especially the veterans, on the same page.

“We all bought into coach’s vision,” said senior defender Rebecca Romero, adding that a player leadership committee also “helped establish our identity.”

The team also changed its style of play. The Cowgirls shifted from counter-attacking to a much more aggressive style of play while still rallying around a strong defense.

“She (Cable) stressed we wanted to put the other teams under pressure,” said Romero. “It’s a lot more fun to play.”

Scoring helps make it fun. The Cowgirls have already scored more goals and taken more shots than in each of the previous two seasons. 

McNeese has outscored its opponents 21-18 after scoring just 18 themselves in each of those years. 

Sophomore forward Rhiannon Maynes-Tourond leads the Cowgirls with five goals and two assists. Fellow sophomore Sumayah Brown follows with four goals, three of which are game winners.

Sophomore goalie Shannon Dempsey has posted a 6-2-2 record. In her last game, a 1-1 tie against Houston Christian, Dempsey recorded a career-high eight saves, one more than in her three appearances last season. 

She leads the conference in shutouts and has a .855 save percentage.

This year, she has allowed six goals, made 46 saves, and recorded six shutouts. She was named the Southland’s Goalie of the Week once. Romero and Alex Arvanitis have each won a Defender of the Week honor.

Now, they are thinking about more than a .500 record.