In Victoria Rothrauff’s three seasons — now heading into the fourth — with the Seton Hill women’s soccer team, the only stable factor has been instability.

The Franklin Regional grad and the rest of her fellow rising seniors are on their fourth coach. They were recruited by Andy McNab, but he moved on before they ever played for him. Zak Kruger was next, followed last season by Adrian Blewitt. Now, Riley Butler is taking over the reins of the Griffins.

Oh, and this senior class’s freshman season was wiped out by the covid-19 pandemic.

All of that tumult could have — perhaps should have — sent Rothrauff and her classmates scattering in all directions, seeking greener, more secure pastures.

Instead, the players have stuck together, and as they approach the end of their careers, they are intent on making the 2023 a new starting point for the team.

“I might be a little biased,” Rothrauff said, “but I truly think my class is the best class that we have right now. We’re a bunch of girls who are good about wanting to be leaders to younger kids. I think we’re going to be a great senior class.

“We’ve, obviously, been through a lot. We know a lot, and I think we know how to take a team and really just come together instead of fall apart when times get tough or there’s something we all don’t like. We’re in this together, and we want to make the best out of this.”

That’s a far cry from where this group started. (For the record, the other holdover members of Rothrauff’s recruiting class are Nevena Gojak, Penn-Trafford grad Emma Rain, Lizzie Adams, Molly Newton-Smith, Leah Policarpio, Madison Carr, Natalie Maver, Grace Smakosz, Peyton Deastlov, Kathryn Penman and Alianna Resch). With their freshman season canceled because of the pandemic, their sophomore season was like starting from Square One.

And when it came to offering help to the “true” freshmen, there was none to give.

“I kind of felt like everybody was on the same page,” she said. “It had been a while since anybody had really been able to get competitive with soccer. Our incoming freshmen knew about as much as I did. … They’d ask me questions, and I’d be like, ‘Honestly, I wish I could be the person to answer, but we have to ask someone else for the both of us.’ ”

The team managed to pull together and post a fairly respectable 7-9-1 record. Rothrauff, who started eight of the 16 matches in which she appeared, contributed with her one and only collegiate goal, a game-winner against West Liberty.

Last season, with yet another new coach (Blewitt), the Griffins went 8-4-7. Rothrauff appeared in every match, starting 16, and had a pair of assists.

All things considered, the outcomes were remarkable. Rothrauff credits two factors for the team being able to keep its head above water: the players — “It hasn’t torn us apart. It’s honestly just brought us together,” she said. — and grad assistant Bri Guy.

Guy stuck with the program for three seasons, longer than any of the head coaches Rothrauff and her classmates have had, and, Rothrauff said, provided calm in the storm.

“She has been outstanding for all of us,” Rothrauff said about the former Greensburg Central Catholic girls coach. “She has been our rock and helped us get through a lot of the change and the new leadership.”

Enter Butler, the next in line to try to put the program on firm footing. Rothrauff said he initially met with the rising seniors on a Zoom interview, and, just before Fourth of July weekend, the new coach met with them in person.

“He seems like a great guy who is ready to come to this program and really make it something that is solid, consistent, stable and ready to put us in the right direction,” she said.

With a relatively small senior class last season, Rothrauff said it was natural for her group to assume some of the leadership responsibility. That aspect won’t change, she said, adding another element of security to the upcoming season.

Individually, Rothrauff said she has been a bit disappointed with her offensive performance.

She said she has been plenty satisfied with her playing time, but she had hoped to produce more than a goal and two assists in two seasons.

The coaching changes, she said, have not been a factor in her sub-par production, though, she said, she has changed positions a couple of times, and those changes might have limited some of her scoring opportunities.

In a career full of change, Rothrauff said one would be welcome: increased offensive output. She has spent the summer working on her touches and her shot and keeps in game shape by playing in adult pick-up leagues in hopes of making a bigger impact on the stat sheet.

The other desired change is flipping some of those ties into wins. Turning just two of those seven ties into wins last season would have vaulted the Griffins from the No. 4 spot in the West standings to No. 2.

“We’d tie games, and we’d look at it afterward and say, ‘OK, a tie is a point. It gets us in the right direction,’ ” she said. “But there were definitely some times when we could have closed it off and had a win. I think that’s what we’re looking to do.

“We had a great season. It’s just about the small stuff you can kind of hone in on, and it can improve our record tremendously.”

This will be Rothrauff’s last ride with the Griffins. Though she has an extra year of eligibility remaining because of the covid season, she is enrolled in Seton Hill’s LECOM program for dentistry, which requires four years of dental school after she completes her undergrad degree.

And while it seems as though she has little time to salvage something significant from a career full of uncertainty, Rothrauff isn’t focused on what might have been.

“I want to be part of a start of something,” she said. “Even if it isn’t this year, maybe I can look back and would love, in 10 years, that the same coach is still around and the program is moving forward and I can say I was a part of the beginning of that.”

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)