Concordia Women’s Soccer is off to a flier this season as they’ve started the season ten games unbeaten. They look to improve upon their 4-0-1 conference record and finish out what could be a historic season.

Much of this success has come on the back of their lockdown defense, which helped the Lady Eagles to garner 12 clean sheets over a school record 13 game winning streak that carried over from last season.

“Our defense has been something [that] we’ve taken pride in the past years and [we] want to continue that,” said Sophia Munoz, senior defender. “We’re at a point where we don’t want to focus on stats but want to dial in to keep our position strong for postseason.”

The women have scored 19 goals so far this season and only conceded two. They have had two players win PacWest Defensive Player of the Week: junior goalkeeper Riley Urquiza and junior defender Madison Hall. Junior forward Hailey Havican who leads the team with nine goal contributions has also earned a PacWest Player of the Week. Sophomores Sarah Venegas and Bella Barrett are the next leading contributors on the scoresheet.

Concordia has won one PacWest Team of the Week award and is currently ranked number 11 in the nation, having reached as high as number five in recent weeks. A lot of this success can be attributed not only to the pure talent of the team, but their bond as a sisterhood as well.

“At this time we have to focus on ourselves and remember what we all want to accomplish,” said Munoz. “We want to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves first before anything else. Although it’s great [to win], we all care about each other and want to make sure we’re all good too.” The women are no strangers to being in a position of success following two successive national tournament berths. This year, they’ll be hungry for silverware.

“Over the past two years, we were in the same position where we made it to the national tournament but fell short when we knew we could have won the national championship,” said Kayla Murakami, senior forward. “I think our team is using this as motivation and [it] is what is pushing us to continue to work hard and reach our full potential.”

The women’s team is achieving all of this despite the departures of longtime coach Cheyne Gordon and graduate assistants Rodrigo Selingardi and Daniela Filipovic. Their departures have led to an updated coaching staff with new arrivals Humberto Villegas and Brianna Guerra, along with an increased role for Madison Stenslie.

“I think that losing an assistant coach obviously had a huge impact on the team mentally because Cheyne played a huge factor in the success of the team over the past few years,” said Murakami. “However I think our new assistant coach brings a new element to the team focusing on technicality and offering a new perspective and high soccer IQ that has greatly led to the success of our team this season.”

Following a statement victory over reigning national champions Point Loma Nazarene University, the season’s steamroll stalled a bit with a tie against Chaminade University, another top team. “It’s important to recognize our strong start and the stats that we have put out this season, however, I don’t think that it is something we idolize or focus on,” said Murakami. “Obviously our end goal is winning the PacWest title and national championship but we try to take everything day by day and focus on the game that is in front of us.”

The women are currently tied with Hawaii Hilo for least points dropped in the PacWest and will have many opportunities to get back to winning ways, with four away games in a row coming up, starting on Sat., Oct 26 against Azusa Pacific.

“If we continue to do our job and stick to our system and core principles, I think that we can be a very dangerous team going forward and hopefully in the end win a national championship,” said Murakami.

To stay up to date with the ladies, you can follow them on instagram @cuiwsoccer. Be sure to wish them good luck as well as they head to Azusa Pacific for their next conference game on Sat., Oct. 26.

Tags: women's athletics

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