By Karly Ratzenberger

The women’s club soccer team traveled to Houghton last Sunday to take on Michigan Tech in the season opener. The ’Cats won the game with a shutout score of 3-0.

Head coach Thomas Swayne expressed his confidence in the team’s abilities; however, the competition this weekend was not easy.

“Tech has gotten a lot better than last year and much better than we expected,” Swayne said.

The ’Cats have only two weeks of practice under their belts, but according to Swayne, everyone played pretty well, (and the team) really gels well together.

Junior midfielder Ashley Foster saw this weekend’s game as a good opportunity for the team to get back into the swing of things.

“It was definitely a good game for us to get into our groove,” Foster said. “It was our first game as a team, and we have a lot of new girls.”

Senior forward Lana Bannow had only positive things to say about the team’s win this weekend.

“I am very satisfied with the team’s performance this weekend,” Bannow said. “The girls knew what they were supposed to be doing, and we were able to come away with the victory.”

The team spent most of its first few practices getting back into shape and conditioning, and according to Bannow, the team also did a little scrimmaging to help get everybody used to their positioning and whom they would be playing with.

Foster said she viewed the game against Tech as a good learning tool that helped the team figure out what they need to work on for the future.

“We have to work on getting positions down and positioning on the field,” Foster said. “We are also working to get people to be more vocal; communication on the field was a big thing that we noticed needed work.”

A few elemental factors such as rain and playing on turf threw the team a curve ball, but the ’Cats fought through it.

“It was slightly raining throughout the game, which made (Tech’s) turf field very slippery and quick. We had to adapt to the speed of the ball and work on slowing down the game ourselves,” Bannow said.

Next weekend, the ’Cats will be taking a road trip to Illinois to play Northwestern University and University of Illinois. The ’Cats will be playing Northwestern at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24 in Evanston, Ill. The game against University of Illinois will be at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 25 in Chicago.

“I think they will be really good competition,” Foster said. “Northwestern is one of the better teams in our conference, and University of Illinois is normally pretty evenly matched with us. It will definitely be a good weekend.”