UMPI Women’s Soccer Looking To Put The NAC On Notice This Year

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) - The UMPI Women’s Soccer Team had a successful opening weekend with a tie and a win. The Owls will play their home opener this weekend as they look to build on last years successful second half of the season. Jonathon Eigenmann has the story.

Zhoreen Malik- " (shorter) we’ve gotten way better. And I feel like we can go all the way to the NAC and win the NAC this year, cause everybody has brought something special to the team and its just a complete team now”.

As The UMPI women’s soccer team looks ahead to a great season, they also reflect on what they accomplished last year

Aaron Marston-”We really went on a good run at the end of the year, beat Thomas college for the first time in 10 years. Had some really competitive matches with some good schools and i think we won 5 or 6 straight games to finish out the year. Doing so put us into the playoffs, so we went into the nac playoffs; North Atlantic Conference, finished in 4th and that’s the first time that our program has made the NAC playoffs”.

In the NAC Playoffs, The owls lost to Maine Maritime Academy by a score of 4-1. despite the tough game, the players say they learned a lot about their team.

Monica McLaughlin-” They are reigning champions of 2019 and obviously last year. We just weren’t mentally prepared, we got down there and i think we got a little too cocky, so I think this year were going to stay humble and stay proud of who we are”.

Coach Aaron Marston believes a lot of the Owls success this year will be on the teams ability to stay healthy, along with the experience they have among the players. In terms of the success on the field, Coach Marston put what they need to do into one concept.

Aaron Marston-” Soccer is a game of time and space, and if we can make the field as big as possible when were on offense, that buys us more time. if we can shrink the field and make it really compressed on defense, that takes away time form them. So i mean if we can do those things and that’s the way that we like to play, then we can possess and move the ball on anybody”.

According to the players, this team has worked a lot over the last couple of years and is pretty well rounded, something they say the others teams in the conference should pay attention to

Alexis Ireland- " Honestly i think we could dominate any part of the field, from our keeper all the way to our forward, I feel like were starting to glue and were starting to connect/play better throughout the midfield but building up all the way from the backline to the forwards I feel like that’s one thing that is starting to flow a little bit more for us”.

With the team getting into the playoffs last season, it stands to reason that they want even more this year, and Coach Marston is ready to fuel their chemistry, hunger, determination, to take the team to even greater heights not seen before by this program.

Jonathon Eigenmann, Newssource 8

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