There are a lot of new faces around Mississippi State soccer as they  open their season under new head coach Tom Anagnost on Friday against Stephan F. Austin State University.
Anagnost is not the only newcomer to MSU’s soccer team which will have 12 newcomers on the roster this season, including graduate transfer and goalkeeper Catalina Perez. Perez, of Boca Raton, Florida, spent the last three seasons at the University of Miami (FL) where she redshirted her sophomore season because of a torn ACL.
 She was born in Colombia, but moved to the United States when she was four years old. She was a member of the Columbia Senior Women’s National Team at the 2016 Olympic games and 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Her teammates Mallory Eubanks and MaKayla Waldner gave her high praise for their new keeper throughout media day.
“She is probably the best goalkeeper I have ever played against,” Eubanks, a senior forward said. “I can’t score against her.”
When asked if she would take her over the other goalkeepers in the SEC, Wadlner said, “I put money on Cat any day.”
While MSU has a lot of newcomers they also have experience littered throughout the field.
Eubanks, of Lexington, Kentucky, led the team in goals and assists last season and has logged 4,586 minutes in her career. She ended the season on an eight-game streak of 90 minutes or more played in a game.
Coach Anagnost expects her to be a big part of the offense this season and her unselfishness is actually hurting her. He wants her “to be a little more ‘alpha’.”
“In the end, we want all our players to pass Mallory the ball, and we want Mallory to get the ball from all of our players. I think she’s an extraordinary facilitator of the game and creator of scoring chances,” Anagnost said. “For our team, we also want her to be putting herself in more scoring situations and shooting the ball more, etc.”
MSU has played in two exhibitions before the official start of the season on Friday. They lost their first exhibition against the University of Florida, a team that won the SEC Tournament last season. They beat the University of Memphis 1-0 last Friday night in an exhibition.
“I think when you play an extraordinary team like Florida, it’s going to expose a lot of things; and we were exposed,” Anagnost said. “I think from watching them as a group, we learned a lot.”
Anagnost said Eubanks and Perez are future pros and that if Waldner works hard she could be. He said soccer is a sport where you can dominate possession and the game and lose or vice versa. He said that makes it hard to coach results but that his expectation for the season is to get better every day.
“If we do that and our kids individually learn from every session, it will create individually better players and collectively a better team,” Anagnost said. “Their role on this team is pretty easy, and if we can do that there’s tons of things that can happen that we never thought possible.”
MSU women’s soccer will open the season against the Stephen F. Austin State Ladyjacks. The Ladyjacks last season finished the season 13-5-0 and finished second in the Southland Conference.  
They will play at MSU Soccer Field at 7 p.m. and admission is free for everyone. 
Contact Taylor Rayburn at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.