Hockinson’s Battan leads Idaho to Big Sky title

Kavita Battan and the Idaho Vandals do not want the best season in program history to end.

Idaho became the first Big Sky Conference women’s soccer team to win nine games this season, a tie with Eastern Washington in Friday’s regular season finale the only minor blemish on a 9-0-1 conference slate.

With the title comes the No. 1 seed and the right to host the conference tournament, which begins Thursday at Guy Wicks Field in Moscow, Idaho.

The tournament winner will claim the Big Sky’s automatic bid to the NCAA College Cup.

While a team that won a regular season conference championship without a loss could be in line for an at-large bid, that is hardly certain and not something that the Vandals want to have to hope for.

“Obviously, it’s all great to be undefeated throughout the season and that’s a huge honor for us as a team, but now it’s a completely different thing,” said Hockinson High School graduate Battan, who Tuesday was named First Team All-Big Sky. “If we lose, we’re out.”

That reality keeps the team’s focus after a 13-4-2 regular season and the first conference title in program history.

After seasons of 4-16 (4-8 Big Sky) and 4-14-2 (4-4-2) during Battan’s first two seasons, this year’s Vandals are 10-0-2 since their last loss, a double overtime setback Sept. 13 at Memphis. The team won nine consecutive matches from the start of the Big Sky slate until Friday’s tie with EWU.

Next is the tournament, with Idaho starting in Friday’s semifinals against the winner of a Thursday match between EWU and Montana.

“We’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing, which is taking it one game at a time,” Battan said. “We’re focused on Friday’s game. We don’t know who we’re going to play — we find out Thursday — but we’ll have the same game plan.

“We know how to defend as a team. We know how to attack as a team. We don’t worry about the next opponent, so as of right now, we don’t even care about the final. All we care about is the semis and the Montana-Weber game to find out who we’re going to play.

“Whichever team we play, we’ll have the same game plan we always have and go out there and have fun and don’t even worry about the outcome — just focus on the process of the game and what it takes to get the job done at that moment.”

Scoring leader

Battan played in every match as a freshman and sophomore, starting 25 of 40, and totaled five goals and 13 points. The program went through a coaching change after her freshman season with the resignation of Pete Showler after nine seasons in 2013 and the hiring of Derek Pittman in early 2014.

As a junior, Battan leads the team with 10 goals, 24 points, 50 shots and 31 shots on goal, and is tied for the team lead with three game-winning goals, also adding four assists.

The 10 goals has her tied for third on the single-season list in the program’s 18-year history. For the regular season, she was fourth in the Big Sky in goals and points, sixth in shots and joined two teammates in a seven-way tie for third in game-winning goals.

“From freshman year to junior year now, I just think I’ve matured a lot as a player,” Battan said. “I think experience has been a huge thing for me — being able to get a good amount of minutes my freshman and sophomore year has enabled me to develop into the player that I’ve become now. Also, I’ve had good upperclassmen to help me get there. We had a coaching change, and when Derek came in last year, he’s helped me develop and mature a lot as a player, as well.”

While the goals jump off the stat sheet, Battan’s larger role is “just trying to make things happen in the final third of the field,” she said, which can be “either getting a shot off or whether it’s an assist or making runs down the line to get the ball and get a cross off, or pulling a defender out so my midfielder can through and get a shot off — just basically being there in the attack to help my team with whatever we can do to get the ball into the back of the net.”

Matches begin with Battan on the right win on top of a 4-4-2 formation, but once the whistle blows, there is plenty of interchanging responsibilities.

That includes defense.

The Vandals put the squeeze on opponents’ attacks, Battan said, “and that starts with the forwards.” Once Idaho gains possession, the forwards “just fly and go straight to goal.”

Battan’s goals have been the result of an assortment of setups, her most recent on a header off a long throw-in.

“It just kind of happens,” she said. “Sometimes I just feel like I get open in spaces to get the ball in the back of the net, and my team knows how to find me and they’re always in the right position. We just know how each other plays so well and we find each other — and I’ve just been in the right place at the right time.”

Vandal chemistry

Battan said her confidence has “grown a ton this year” — in herself, but also her coaches and teammates having confidence in her — as the team chemistry that began developing in the spring is getting results in the fall.

“I think it’s finally falling into place this season,” Battan said. “It’s taken some time to get there, but it’s finally starting to get where it needs to be. …

“Everybody is 100 percent bought in to what we’ve wanted to accomplish this season. That initial goal from the start was to make it to the conference tournament. We never expected to win the whole thing and be hosting it, but we were so focused on getting to the tournament that once we got there, every game our confidence kept growing and growing. We’re there for each other, no matter what. The coaches are there for us, and we’re there for the coaches. They believe in us, and we believe in them.”