“Together we are one and fit together like a family,” sophomore special education major Courtney Davis said about her team.
Over the past ten years, coach Jackie Neary has lead her team to the league semifinals seven times. Neary and the three senior captains, Kate Ryan, Elissa Salantri and Melissa Benedetti, hope that they can lead the team to eight.
“It was another tough preseason thanks to our strength and conditioning coach, Nick. The freshmen overall did well and a couple of them broke into starting positions,” Neary said. Neary feels very strong about her upcoming freshmen and she feels they can greatly help out the team.
All of the new freshmen come from different high schools, which made it a little harder to get the team to click in the beginning. Courtney Davis, sophomore special education major, said, “We are a unique team. We come from a bunch of different high schools getting taught different skills,” Davis said.
On Labor Day weekend, the team competed in a tournament where they were able to put their new skills and hard preseason work to the test. This was a very challenging tournament that the team has always struggled with.
This tournament turned out to be very successful for the team. “Obviously this preseason was productive, because for the first time we beat Drew University, and then Swarthmore,” Neary said excitedly about her team.
Senior business administration major Elissa Salantri was very excited for her team’s win and gave her a lot of hope for the upcoming season. “After winning our tournament this weekend, we are really looking forward to this season. We have great chemistry on and off the field.”
A lot of the players contributed to this exciting win against Drew University. Freshman Lauren Alessi led the offense to their 2-1 win with two goals. Freshman Maura Gordon assisted Alessi with one of the goals. Sophomore Desiree Umosella helped the team for its second win against Swarthmore College leading the offense with two goals.
After last year’s record of eight wins and eleven losses the team was picked to finish second in the overall conference standings. Their record showed the coaches of the Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) that they should have a very promising year.
The CSAC conference games begin on Sept. 24 against Marywood. This will show how well their season will start off.
Neary and her players are looking forward to this season and hope it will be very successful. Neary said, “I want the team to continue the hard work and we look forward to starting our conference games.”
