The No.19 Wildcats stayed put in the national rankings this week after a goal by sophomore Molly Pistorious in the 87th minute gave NMU the 1-1 draw against Michigan Tech. The Huskies were up 1-0 after a goal late in the second half and were giving very few opportunities to NMU until the breakthrough goal.

“Points on the road are very important down the stretch. And so, overall, there’s some things out, we want to clean up and kudos to Tech, they did a good job disrupting our game plan. They made it very difficult to play at times,” Head coach Jon Sandoval said.

After a full week off, the Wildcats will travel down state to take on Davenport University and No.9 Grand Valley State to kick off their four-game road trip. Although Davenport is near the bottom of the standings in the GLIAC, they are still playing well with a 4-3-3 record, Sandoval and the ‘Cats know they need to prepare for every team’s best version this late in the season.

“It’s about taking one game at a time and the only focus that we have right now is Friday’s match and properly preparing this week, both physically and mentally… in order to go into DU and get a result, it’s going to take a lot and we have to do a little bit better at some of the blue-collar work that we didn’t do against tech,” Sandoval said.

Following the match with the Panthers, the Wildcats will travel to Allendale for a rematch with No.9 Grand Valley State, Saturday Oct. 14th at 1pm. The two teams faced off just three weeks ago in Marquette with the match ending in a 0-0 standstill. This will be a huge test to see just how far the Wildcats have come in the short time Sandoval has been with NMU.

“Obviously we love being home. I think we’ve had a lot of success at home, but the road is where a character is built. And these next four are really important for accomplishing our long-term goals,” Sandoval said.