Another summer came and went, and that means the fall season is just around the corner for the NMU women’s soccer team.

As the preseason winds down, the squad plans to make the most of their remaining exhibition matches, shaking off the rust and preparing to bring their top performance to the pitch.

Over the weekend, the lady Wildcats traveled down to Chicago to scrimmage teams, test out the new roster and work out all the errors before the season begins.

The series of friendlies allowed the team to get the gears turning and refamiliarize themselves with how their teammates pass and how they move on and off the ball, senior goalkeeper Alex Simmons said.

“The second game that we had on Sunday was a lot better [than the first],” Simmons said. “You could see we progressed as a team and started moving together.”

After losing two seniors and the addition of four new players, the team’s roster is largely unchanged. This season’s squad is made up of many veteran players who are already familiar with the each other’s styles of play and are also very close off the field.

“We are not that team that’s going to go around and say, ‘We are young. We are building,’” head coach Matt Grandstrand said “We are not young. We are not building. We are an older team that has been together for a while now. So we are looking for results.”

An advantage this year’s team will have is that the girls are very close on and off the field and are already fairly familiar with how each other play, said senior Carmen Villarruel. She also added that although the team is good individually, they still need to improve their overall harmony as a unit.

Despite a slow start to the 2015 season, the Wildcats showed their resilience by working their way to fifth in last season’s GLIAC conference with the overall record of 7-10. One point separated the ’Cats from third. The highly competitive conference consists of opponents such as defending National Champions Grand Valley, along with Ferris State and Ashland University.

Granstrand did not have a clear answer as to why the team suffered the losing streak. With many of the games being decided by a single goal in overtime, Granstrand chalked it up to poor luck.

He added he was proud of the team’s ability to stay positive in the face of tough losses and was impressed when the team came back the next month to win nearly every game.

“The team could have packed it in and said, ‘Hey, we are no good,’ but we didn’t,” Grandstrand said. “Conference play started and we started a new season and ended well.”

The team’s last exhibition match before the season is against Allouez Stride at 4 p.m.  at home on Saturday, Aug. 27.
For their first season game the ’Cats will take on Finlandia on home turf, Thursday Sept.1.