Nov. 13—Recruiting looks a little different now than when Jim Stone started his tenure as the Bemidji State women’s soccer team’s head coach.
After the program’s inception in 1996, Stone became the Beavers’ fifth head coach in seven years. BSU hadn’t had more than four wins in any campaign before he took the job.
But things change.
Now, Bemidji State is revered as one of the powers in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. The Beavers have won a pair of NSIC Tournaments in Stone’s near-quarter-century at the helm, along with a regular-season title in 2018. In 2022, they claimed the program’s first Central Region Tournament championship.
Success breeds more change, and with it comes exposure and opportunity.
After winning the NSIC Tournament championship for the second time in 2023, Stone needed to reload at the goalkeeper position, with Edie Frantzen departing for graduation.
The Beavers had one sophomore goalie rostered, Ana Steadman, for the 2024 season. They picked up another in Rozlyn Buettner, a freshman out of Gretna, Nebraska.
Still, the keeper room had some space for graduate transfer Sonia Alfieri.
“It’s the modern world now, so that means I found Sonia through an email,” Stone quipped. “We were in need of a veteran goalkeeper. That was a big need for us last year. We hadn’t gone the foreign route much in the past, for multiple reasons, but we needed a goalkeeper. I stumbled across this email, dug into the video and really liked her.”
Alfieri hails from Mamer, Luxembourg, which is certainly against the grain of the Beavers’ typical recruiting pipelines.
In Bemidji State’s rise to women’s soccer prominence at the D-II level, Stone hasn’t been afraid to go outside of Minnesota — and the Midwest — to find players. While half of the roster is usually from Minnesota, the rest come from neighboring states and other regions around the country, like the West Coast, the South and the Northwest.
BSU hasn’t had a player from outside of the lower 48 since Grace Ogden, a defender from Eagle River, Alaska, in 2013. Alfieri became the first Bemidji State player from outside of the United States since Megan Castro, a defender out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2012.
Alfieri is a client of an agency that was in charge of finding her a home to play college soccer in the United States for the first time in 2024. They reached out to coaches in all divisions and caught Stone’s eye.
For Alfieri, finding an academic fit was just as important as her athletic ventures. She was looking to get a graduate degree.
“I wanted to find something for me, and that’s environmental studies,” Alfieri said. “Bemidji State had one. We sent emails to a lot of schools, and Coach Stone answered. I had to Google Maps the place to figure out where it was.”
A lot has happened since that email exchange. Alfieri has risen to become one of the top keepers in the conference. She’s led the Beavers to a 14-2-3 record, riding a 12-game unbeaten streak and an eight-game winning streak into the semifinal round of the NSIC Tournament.
But behind the eye-popping goalkeeping statistics is a fierce competitor, one who’s overcome a triad of knee injuries, moving to a new country and integrating herself into a culture accustomed to winning.
Following Bemidji State’s 2-0 win over Minnesota Duluth on Nov. 6, its sixth clean sheet in the last seven games, Alfieri attributed her impressive run to a mental shift in her second season with the Beavers.
“Mentality-wise, I’ve just been working a lot, especially after my injury in the spring,” Alfieri said. “I tried to be better than I was the year before. I talked to Coach about it, and I just feel like this team is special. They make me better every day. It’s a collective thing. We all keep getting better.”
During a spring practice, Alfieri tore her meniscus.
“I had to get surgery for the third time on the same knee,” she continued. “I’m kind of used to it, but not in a good way. I came back and tried to get better for this team.”
Her first go around under the needle was in 2019. She tore her ACL and meniscus, then tore her meniscus again in 2021.
“The first time is difficult. The second time is easier, and the third time is a little bit easier, too, depending on the people you have around you,” Alfieri said. “I was at every spring game. I was at every practice. The girls were motivating me to push and be back for the fall.”
It was an injury that gave Stone some pause. He had penciled Aliferi in as the starter for 2025, her final season of collegiate eligibility. But Stone had been burned by a meniscus recovery earlier that year when defender Julie Freed was sidelined for nine months and didn’t play in 2024.
“I’ll be totally honest, and I mean this as an enormous compliment to Sonia, but I didn’t think she’d be playing this year after her injury,” Stone said. “She was only nine months off from her injury. She comes in and we have a mile-and-a-half test, and she passed it. I mean, she’s just blown me away with what she’s been able to do this season. I didn’t anticipate this. I couldn’t see this coming in my head.”
Stone added a freshman goaltender to the 2025 roster, believing Alfieri wouldn’t be an option. Payton Kropp, a Lakeville native, started three games for the Beavers this season. Buettner started three more. But Alfieri proved to be too good to keep on the sidelines.
In 13 starts, she’s amassed a .898 save percentage and a 0.41 goals-against average. She’s 11-0-2 this season with seven shutouts.
“I was going to play another goalkeeper,” Stone said. “We have some good goalkeepers in our roster. But Sonia just got a little bit better every day and pushed us to the conclusion that she’s the starting goalkeeper. It’s a testament to her character and her drive.”
The Beavers got a bonus in Alfieri with her leadership traits as well, helping guide a youthful group of goalies through the collegiate ranks.
“She’s been so good with the younger goalkeepers,” Stone added. “It’s such a perfect scenario where she’s able to mentor a little bit, and the younger ones can be sponges. … She had some youth national team experience, so she’s been trained by some high-level coaches. She’s trained against some high-level teams. She brings things that myself and other people can’t bring at times.”
Naturally, Alfieri had some trepidations playing in a new country.
Before arriving at Bemidji State, she played for FC Mamer 32 in the top women’s soccer league in Luxembourg. Alfieri also played for the Luxembourg National Team.
“She’s trained at a really high level,” Stone said. “She’s technically sound. It kind of ended up being a perfect fit with her mentality and her personality. The team calls her ‘Grandma.’ She has a great presence, and it’s just been wonderful to have her.”
Despite carrying a robust set of soccer experiences, Alfieri had to learn the ropes of the American game on the fly.
“I had to understand new rules I wasn’t used to, like substitutions,” Alfieri said. “I was scared the first time after Coach changed people out after 15 minutes. I didn’t know there were so many substitutions. The clock going backward is kind of weird. The rest is basically the same. Play with your feet, play with your heart.”
Alfieri’s acclimation was aided by a welcoming group of teammates.
“The girls were awesome,” Alfieri said. “When I first came here, they came to me when I was all jetlagged. They put me in their circle. They were so welcoming, and that was awesome. The thing that brought me here goes back to my conversation with (Stone) before coming here. He wants a team that’s going to push everybody and wants everybody to be their best self. That’s me. Character-wise, we just want to go for everything and be the best that we can be.”
The Beavers are fulfilling Stone’s vision when he recruited Alfieri. They will play against St. Cloud State at 10 a.m. on Friday in Mankato, with the winner likely earning the right to host half of the Central Region Tournament.
On Wednesday, BSU and SCSU jumped three spots in the regional rankings after the top three schools in the MIAA lost in the opening round of their conference tournament. With Minnesota State holding firm as the third-ranked team in the nation and the top-ranked team in the region, it’s believed that neither BSU or SCSU needs to win the NSIC Tournament to host the Central Region Tournament next weekend.
It would certainly be a boost for Bemidji State, which hasn’t lost a contest at Chet Anderson Stadium this season in nine fixtures.
“It’s a difficult place to play and score goals,” Alfieri said with a laugh. “It’s all the mentality. We work for each other. It’s not me or you. We’re a combined five or six people who do the work to not get scored on. We communicate all the time, take marks and just play smart.
“I will say, having a lake next to a soccer field is pretty sweet. We don’t have that back home.”
