The super captain of the women’s soccer team made a 27-hour plane trip to Africa to volunteer in an orphanage this summer and is the catalyst for the fall team.

Morgan Davison went to Arusha, Tanzania looking for a volunteer opportunity and found a life-changing experience.

“When I got there I didn’t know anybody. I met people and needed teamwork in general,” Davison said. “I took a lot of things I learned in soccer there — patience, teamwork. We needed to stick together even if we didn’t know each other, being very vocal and make it clear what was right and wrong.”

Davison played soccer every day with the children and stayed in shape for her senior season by running and jumping rope.

She said she has brought back a new idea of teamwork, but her soccer skills carried her through her stay in Africa.

The Africana studies major was beyond frightened leaving the country for the first time and knew only basic Swahili words to be able to teach English in an orphanage.

“On the field I’m pretty vocal, especially in the back,” Davison said. “I will put a foot down if someone is wearing the wrong thing or late.”

The defender earned the ‘super captain’ title for her vocal leadership. She is the mouth of the Gators.

“She doesn’t like to admit that she is the ‘super captain’,” fellow captain Robin Bowman said. “She is the leader on and off the field. She’s the loudest on and off the field. She’s been here three years and sets a great example in school. She’s the voice of the team and the captains. She is captain of all captains. She is captain of the team.”

To Davison’s embarrassment, the ‘super captain’ position comes with its very own chant. Chant leader Bowman says “super” and the rest of the team responds “captain.”

“I’ve always been more vocal,” Davison said. “In high school I was that player. I was acaptain as a junior with another senior that left. I took over being vocal at practices.”

Davison has taken on the role of enforcer of rules and policy for the team. Even though she may not like that job, it has to be done, she said.

“As a leader she’s very strong, very demanding, but not in a dictatorship way,” Rachel Lauderdale said. “She wants it for us more then for herself.”

The spring workouts were the turning point for the purple and gold. Davison said the team demanded a lot out of each other.

“We had such a good spring after [coach Jack Hyde] told us about the new players,” Davison said. “We have too much talent to throw away.”

The spring workouts were a good development time, Hyde said, but the team will have to wait and see if that was the turning point.

“We realized we really could win. We won in the spring,” Lauderdale said. “We saw how real our goals are.”

Having new players on the team has added more responsibility to Davison. On the first day of school, she said she found a freshman asking random people where her class was. Davison walked her to her building.

“It’s hard, you have to be honest and make [freshmen] remember that they’re in college and not high school,” Davison said. “I’m being kind of like a mother, college is hard especially with soccer.”
Davison is leader of the defense and the “No Goal Patrol.”

“I feel like I can take more risks because she’s back there,” said defender and captain Lauren Candia about being able to push up the field or take the ball out from the back.

In the first two games of the season the Gators (0-2 record) saw the same results, 1-0 losses. Western Washington University (2-1) and Seattle Pacific University (1-0-1) out shot SF State 42-to-7.

“The shots on goal are not reflective of how the games actually go,” Bowman said. “We had good opportunities that we didn’t capitalize on.”

The team needs to practice finishing in the goal box and work on long shots and all shots, said Carly Bliss.
Three of the seven shots on goal were on target.

“We were unfortunate,” Hyde said. “We had two chances in each game.”

Western Washington’s goal was scored on a ball deflected by a defender.

In the game against Western Washington, the Gators faced a pass-happy team and Seattle Pacific, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s No. 4 team, brought a fast and tough game, Lauderdale said.

“I wasn’t really impressed,” Bliss said about Seattle Pacific. “I was expecting a lot more, they showed their fourth place potential in the second half.”

Davison has helped shape the Gator unit with a new mindset.

“No matter what is going on, she helps us focus positively,” Lauderdale said. “She makes us focus to strive to be better.”

After losses, the team is able to move on, not dwelling on the loss and bring the team down, according to Bliss.

The team will be angry, but it will not carry over to the next game.

“A loss pushes us harder,” Davison said. “If we had a loss [last season] we would dwell on it. As soon as the game was over we looked to our next game with Seattle Pacific.”

Davison, a 21-year-old senior, will graduate from college in three and a half years. Filling the role of ‘super captain.’

“We don’t call her Morgan. We call her super captain,” Candia said. “The title of the article should be super captain.”