The Cuesta women’s soccer team is in the midst of its third season under head coach Kaleb Lique Naitove.
Naitove took the reins as head coach only weeks before the 2022 season began. He was faced with an uphill battle from the start when the team was forced to forfeit all of their Western State Conference (WSC) games due to only having 12 available players. Despite beginning his head coach tenure with no games to play, Naitove took it upon himself to use the year as a base to rebuild the program.
“The initial goal was just to bring back some awareness within the whole soccer community that we’re rebuilding. It’s a new coach, we’ll have more or less a whole new team and it’ll take some time,” Naitove said. “This area’s got a lot of good soccer players and if they know Cuesta has a soccer program, we hope to be an option for them.”
Going into the 2023 season, Naitove was able to build on his first season and welcome his first-ever recruiting class to pair with the returners. The team still had little to no experience in college-level matches, but with a full squad, it had an opportunity to play.
“I think we had a lot of good, competitive games. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a lot of results, but we kind of instilled the principles that we are building on now of not being so concerned about the results, but the character in which we play, working hard for one another and kind of trusting the process,” Naitove said.
The 2023 women’s soccer team ended the season with a 1-15-1 overall record. Despite the underwhelming results, the transparency between coach and players helped the team stay confident going into the next season. Second-year player Keira Becker Tresky credits this transparency as a big reason for her positive experience under Naitove.
“I think just all of us knowing it was a year of rebuilding and reestablishing the program helped us, and Kaleb giving us reminders of that and telling us it’s okay, we don’t have to win to be successful. We’re still successful as we’re growing this team and growing this program back to what it once was,” Becker Tresky said.
Entering the 2024 season, there is excitement for Naitove and crew to see where the team sits among other programs. Already having tripled its win total for the season before conference play, the team has seen its hard work pay off. While wins are important, the real test will be in conference matches to see how the Cougars have progressed since last year.
“Knowing the strength of our conference, if we’re .500 in conference this year, that’s a huge milestone for us,” Naitove said. “That ability to meet the level at which our conference plays at will be very indicative of how we’re doing because if we’re .500 or above in our conference, we compare very well across the CCCAA.”
On Friday, Cuesta women’s soccer beat Oxnard, 5-1. After going down 1-0 soon after the second half started, the Cougars caught fire scoring five unanswered goals before the 90th minute. The team is now 1-1 in WSC play which means they not only are currently on pace for their goal, but it was Naitove’s first conference win since starting his tenure as head coach.
With a 4-3-2 overall season record, the team is trending upward. Having already scored 15 total goals this year, it has surpassed the total goals for 2022 and 2023 combined. While this team has exceeded expectations so far, Naitove and crew will continue to pursue their objectives for this season and the years beyond.
“For this team, this year, if we can continue what we’re doing, be successful and battle in our tough conference, things like that jumpstart that awareness and hold that hype and excitement around the program and it continues to build,” Naitove said. “So I hope we can continue to perform and get people interested in Cuesta women’s soccer.”
The Cougars will continue their three-game home stand on Tuesday versus Ventura and finish it off Friday against Santa Barbara.
