The Women’s Soccer team is gearing up for a spring GNAC season, despite a canceled NCAA tournament this year, should they qualify. But that’s not stopping the team from eyeing the GNAC crown. Senior Madison Bradley and juniors Paige Devine and Sydney Lowe looked back on last year and talked about the upcoming season.

“Over the past three years since my freshman year we started off kind of rough, my second year we got back into it, and then last year was obviously a really good year for us. I think last year we were really good together as a team,” Bradley said.

Last season the team finished 6-5-1 in the conference and 8-9-1 overall and got knocked out 2-1 in the GNAC tournament by the Western Washington University Vikings. The team started practice on Sept. 28. All workouts are socially distanced with the team split into groups. 

“We are all very motivated and I think [it is because of] the possibility of playing in the spring,” Devine said. “We are just really working on the technical aspect of soccer and just trying to get that team bonding together.” 

Devine said despite knowing they wouldn’t have a fall season, they were more motivated to work harder as a team for the upcoming potential spring season.

One thing the team is missing out on this season is pre-season games.

Lowe explained how important it is to win pre-season games because of the impact it has on team seedings when it comes to post-season play.

According to Lowe, the freshmen on the team will be the most impacted by the schedule change with no pre-season because they won’t get to experience those important games. 

However, the upperclassmen are doing their best to help make the freshmen feel welcome and help them to learn how the team plays, according to Lowe.

“That’s a really hard transition and it’s a really weird time so they don’t get to have the full experience and to have a pre-season,” Lowe said. “We don’t even really have a season, that’s hard for them to [adjust to] how we play because they can’t do any contact in practice.”