Mickelle Bisbee – Staff Writer
Since Aug. 5, University of Wyoming’s Women’s Soccer Team reported for an early morning to a long day to begin training for preseason.
Now six games in, the team has two wins, three ties and one loss.
Head coach, Pete Cuadrado, said he was really happy with where his young team was today.
“We’re a team,” Cuadrado said. “We’re not really a one woman show, which I like. I think that’s harder to stop for an opponent.”
This year’s team has strong players, including Michaela Stark who was Mountain West’s offensive player of the week. Jaime Tatum and Summer Taube who Cuadrado said is tough to get off the field because she is a game-changer, goal keepers Riley Furbush and Hannah Lee and defensives Keelie Wortmann and Savannah Warner.
In the past five games, four women were able to score two goals, and two were able to score one. Cuadrado said that type of team collaboration makes this team strong.
“We are a fairly balanced team right now,” said Cuadrado. “We’re deep, which is a strength that I don’t know if we really had last year.”
The team is working on consistency in practice, a tool to keep the advantage point. Being able to consistently play 90 minutes at a time, consistently making a good effort and consistently executing each game will help them keep the ball in the opponent’s goal.
To do this, the team practices for long stretches. Six days a week, the women go through a series of training, conditioning, reviewing tapes, weekend meetings (group and individual), recovering and focusing on nutrition.
Cuadrado said it is a full time job but is filled with an immense amount of rewards. Scholarships, access to strength coaches, dieticians, nutritionists, athletic trainers, medical staff, being able to travel and gear are rewards that make soccer a job worth working.
Compared to last year, where the team graduated 8 seniors, the team is young, however Cuadrado said he would never call the team a rebuilding team because of how strong they are. The young starting line team of 11 consists of five freshmen and four sophomores.
“We’re a very young team, but I think our mind set is that we’re not going to use that as an excuse, we’re going to use that as a tool,” said Cuadrado.
The team has 14 games left in the season before the championships, and Cuadrado said that he always expects the remaining games to go well.
“I think every game there will be adjustments to make, there’ll be game plans we need to execute and I think there will be energy we need to bring to the game,” Cuadrado said. “I think if we do that, [the games] are within our control.”
The team is facing some challenges in these next few games, such as the University of South Dakota in Gillette, WY with the field being turf, an aspect UW’s team is not used to, as well as the University of Montana who has a good team.
Cuadrado said he is excited for every game, nonetheless, and has high hopes for his team to do well and make it in the top 6 teams of 12 at the conference games.
“You’re only as good as your last game,” Cuadrado said.
