The Wildcats Women’s Soccer team continued their offensive dominance as junior Brook Pietila earned Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Offensive player of the week, helping lift the Wildcats to a 7-0-1 record while sitting at 4-0 in the GLIAC standings.

“She has had a great season so far, and she is not one to shy away from big games too,” Coach Jon Sandoval said. “[She also] share[s] her mentality and her sharpness and her approach, not only to the matches, but on a weekly basis within training.” 

Women’s soccer faced off against two of the top GLIAC teams this past weekend as they beat Ferris State on Friday, Sept. 16 by a score of 3-1 and turned around on Sunday and beat Saginaw Valley 4-1. NMU has a huge test coming up as they face off against the previous national champions, Grand Valley State, on Friday, Sept. 23 in Allendale, MI.

“This kind of put us back on our heels and kind of shifted a little bit of the momentum but being able to deal with that pressure and being able to deal with those situations … It is only going to help us longer down the road,” Sandoval said.

Ferris State and Saginaw Valley both had a late goal against the Wildcats possibly shifting momentum in the match, but NMU stayed confident in their game and answered right back with goals of their own each time.

“If we allow a goal to come in, we know and we are confident enough that we can score a goal,” Sandoval said. “Going down or conceding is not going to hurt us so much mentally, we are going to be able to pick ourselves up and respond in the correct manner.” 

NMU has outscored their opponents 29-3 in their 7 wins this season, showing just how many offensive weapons the ‘Cats have. The team has had multiple people score in each game with as many as four different Wildcats earning goals.

“It just keeps us really dynamic and unpredictable for teams to I guess develop an overall scout on who to focus on, because we do have a lot of different weapons that I think can be successful,” Sandoval said.

With the continuous dominance being shown by the Wildcats, they earned a spot in the top 25 coaches’ poll. They are now at number 23 after being previously unranked despite not having recorded a loss this season.

“I think it is just we got the recognition because they had no choice. And we did not give him any choice. So, we have to continue to do so,” Sandoval said. “We have to continue to embrace that chip on our shoulder that we are different and understand that nothing is going to be given to us. It makes us different, makes us stronger. It makes us tougher, and I think that mentality piece is really it is us versus everybody, and that is what we embrace.”