By Gavin Lindahl
Sports Assignment Editor
Despite losing some veteran players early in the season, the women’s soccer team is moving forward with a positive outlook. According to Head Coach Steve Brdarski, the team, filled with mostly first-year players, has taken the early problems in stride.
“There’s definitely some fresh faces,” Brdarski said. “We have nine first-year players. We’ve had some early injuries, so those players have had to get some earlier minutes than we expected. We’ve had some players that have stepped up.”
Senior forward Molly Curry and junior midfielder Alex Meador have both suffered injuries. Curry is out indefinitely and Meador will miss the season. Both players bring an on-field presence Brdarski says will be missed.
In spite of the injuries, freshman forward Danielle Vis has had two game-winning goals within the first four games of her college career. Vis’ performance has led her to be named Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week.
According to Brdarski, Vis has carved herself out a role on the team that he is going to continue to rely on, but the emphasis on all 11 starters is going to continue to be expected.
Freshmen defender Syndey Cassagnol has also stepped up despite an early injury in the preseason, and the rest of the rookies have also performed well.
“Whenever you have good, new players coming in, you’re nervous to rock the boat or something, but the new players have good chemistry with the old players,” Brdarski said. “And that’s why it’s been easier to take these early injuries and convert that energy into big wins.”
The squad’s biggest win this season came against Kent State, Brdarski said. Kent St. has only one loss this season – to the Bonnies – and has already proven itself against some of the better teams in Division I soccer. Brdarski claims that the success came from early control of the game.
“We were organized defensively, we had tons of energy in the first 20 minutes, and we were going after them,” Brdarski said. “It’s the same thing as the Canisius game. We scored early in the game, we weren’t chasing after the game, and we were in the driver’s seat.”
However, good has come with the bad through the first four games. The team sits at .500 currently with losses to Buffalo and Niagara University. Brdarski says that both losses were winnable games, and the problem lies with the squad’s maintaining energy.
“Buffalo was a shock for us, we were the better team during the first half and then fitness kind of kicked in,” Brdarski said. “With Niagara, we put way too much energy into Kent St., and we just weren’t able to recover. It was Niagara’s first game of the season, and we had just finished a tough weekend with two games that went all the way down to the wire.”
Brdarski says that the team is going to continue to work on conditioning and fitness as well as learning from their mistakes and applying it to their next game.
“Not every team can say as quickly as this team has that ‘this is wrong, this is how we’re going to change it,’ and then next game it’s changed. That’s good to see from this group,” Brdarski said.
The Bonnies are away today at Akron at 7 p.m. They also have another away game on Sunday at Robert Morris at 1 p.m.
