Home Stretch: Preview of the Soccer Season With Katie O'Kane

Brooke Hale: Hi and welcome back to the Home Stretch, The Daily Utah’s Chronicle sports podcast. My name is Brooke Hale, and I’ll be your host. Today, we have the soccer senior midfielder, Katie O’Kane, the senior from Seattle, Washington. Katie has started all three years at Utah. With Katie coming off a hat trick last week against Weber State, we asked her to join us for the podcast today. So hi Katie, and welcome to the podcast.

Katie O’Kane: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Brooke Hale: Of course. So just kind of get us started heading into your senior year. What have you done differently in off season to prepare for this season?

Katie O’Kane: So I think this year was actually pretty different for me. Usually I just go home, I spend my summer in Seattle and I just kind of train by myself. Or I kind of try to find some friends who are nearby, who I played club with, to do little sessions with, but for the majority, it’s just on my own. And this year, instead of doing that, I actually played for a summer team in California. And I think that was helpful for me, because I was able to get more like — keep my game fitness up. And also it’s just like — for anyone who plays soccer knows — doing individual work is very important for growing your own self and your own skill set, but it’s very much a team sport, so being able to continue to work with teammates and figure out tactics and stuff was very helpful for me.

Brooke Hale: Yeah, absolutely. What part of California were you in?

Katie O’Kane: I was staying in San Jose, but I was playing for Oakland Soul.

Brooke Hale: That’s so awesome. So what are your personal goals for the season?

Katie O’Kane: So it kind of ties into our team goals a little bit, but I think that my personal goals are to help this team in any way possible, whether that’s assisting or scoring or just like putting in big tackles and working hard, because I think that since the years that I’ve been here, I think we have not necessarily underperformed, but just not gotten results, and I think that we have always had the team to put in results, and we haven’t. And so I really just don’t want this to be that type of year again, and I want to do everything that I can personally to help us go as far as I think we deserve to go.

Brooke Hale: Yeah, for sure, you kind of just mentioned the team. So how do you feel about this team this season?

Katie O’Kane: I think that it’s the best team we’ve had so far, and in terms of talent, we have so much, and we’re all very bought in, and I think we are really able to — if we can put together what we have individually and make it more of a team, I would say, I think that will help a lot. And it’s hard because we did just these players. We got like … I think half of our starting lineup is new, so it’s hard to learn how to play with each other in such short time, but I think that it’s already getting better. And I think that if we can continue to work with each other and work for each other, I think we can be really successful, for sure.

Brooke Hale: So moving into the Big 12, what are you most excited for?

Katie O’Kane: I’m just excited to like play new teams, and I think that style of play, like Pac-12 was a very like everyone kind of played the same way, minus maybe two teams. Like, we all like to keep the ball and keep possession. And we were not that we weren’t physical, but I think that it was a less physical game, and it was more of like a tactical like, how do we get around the other team game? And I think the Big 12 is going to be different. I think it’s going to be more about not who can hit each other the hardest, but I think other teams, that’s kind of more their focus. It’s more of a direct game and more of a physical game. And I think it’ll be interesting for us to see how we can continue to do what we do in that type of environment, and see how we can match up against, like other teams physicality. And I think we kind of saw that in our game against LSU recently, and I think we did a really good job of matching their physicality, which was a test we hadn’t really had yet so.

Brooke Hale: Who are you most excited to play against?

Katie O’Kane: I think … I mean probably BYU. Since I’m from Seattle, and I’ve kind of spent my whole life like watching the Pac-12 and stuff. I think there was a bunch of teams in the Pac. I knew all the teams, obviously, and I had a bunch of friends that went to all these teams. But now that the Big 12 is obviously not as much West Coast, I don’t know as many teams or as many players. And obviously BYU is always a big one, because there are rivals, and feels really good to beat them so that’s an exciting one.

Brooke Hale: Great. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts, Katie, and best of luck to the rest of the season. And thank you for listening to Home Stretch, The Daily Utah Chronicle sports podcast. Stay tuned for a new episode every week.

Transcribed by Otter.ai

Producer/Host: Brooke Hale — [email protected]  | @brookehale

Guest: Katie O’Kane

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