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Kara Blosser, freshman in first year college, fends the ball from going out-of-bounds against Old Dominion Friday, Aug. 21, after assisting Paige Dugal, a sophomore in biomedical engineering, score the first goal in a winning effort. Photo by Jonathan Stephens
The women’s soccer team is preparing for its final non-conference game that will be played at Dail Soccer Stadium against the East Carolina University Pirates. This will not be an easy task for the Pack, as ECU has gone 3-1 so far this season, but the Pirates are coming off of a tough loss as Wake Forest shut them out 0-4 this past Sunday.
State is riding a positive streak as the team is currently 4-1 and coming off a 4-0 win against Stony Brook. The coaching staff and the players are riding on high expectations for this ECU matchup and say they view this game as a big step towards the ACC competition that will begin soon.
“We’ve actually improved a lot over last year. We played a lot of difficult teams so far outside of our region, [including] ECU this Friday. It will be a good game to [lead] us into the ACC,” senior defender Gia Cipollini said.
According to freshman midfielder Kara Blosser, the team’s last win against Stony Brook was more of a confidence builder than a true test of its ability to play against ACC opponents.
“It was a big win for us because, of course, all of our players got in and it was good to play around, but they weren’t the best competition for us to prepare for [ECU]. It’s really good that we got that win and we came back from that 1-0 loss [to UNLV], so we know that we can bounce back, so we have confidence going in,” said Blosser.
Coach Steve Springthorpe has kept practice as normal as possible to prepare for the Pirates and get his team mentally prepared for the ACC schedule.
“Well, I don’t know that we’ve spent a lot of time preparing for ECU specifically — we know what they’re [going to] do, we know how to play,” Springthorpe said. “But we’re more concerned about the things we need to improve on as a team. We haven’t done anything much different for ECU.”
The bottom line for Springthorpe is that every win counts, no matter what team they come up against.
“Overall we [want to] win as much as we can going into conference,” Springthorpe said. “It’s going to be tough, but we are going to prepare as much as we can for that first conference game.”
Blosser said she believes this season is her chance to make an impact on the program that is regaining confidence. She said she wants to contribute to the team and win for the sake of the senior class.
“At the beginning, we all had to share some thoughts on our season and talk about how this is [the] last time [the seniors will] probably ever be playing soccer in their lives,” Blosser said. “I’m playing for them because I still have years to play after this. It’s a fresh opportunity for the freshmen coming in, and a cool thing for the seniors because they get a chance to make an impact when everything is brand new,” Blosser said.