Welcome back to another start of the school year Wildcats! As classes begin to set in, so do sports; in fact, sports will be coming back this week as the Women’s soccer team is set to take the field for the first time this Friday. The women’s soccer team will look a little different this season, with the loss of players and some coaches—most notably the head coach. 

With the loss of previous head coach Jon Sandoval, this offseason the team looked for a new coach to lead this talented team to more victories. The search led them to Erin Egolf. 

While the season has not yet officially started, the team has competed in three back-to-back exhibition games to gauge where they are as a team before the start of the season this weekend. 

“It’s also really good to see where our strengths lie, where our deficiencies are, so we know how to plan moving forward.” Said head coach Erin Egolf regarding the exhibition games.

While the exhibition games can provide insights for teams, they are not full games, and they often lead to discovering certain aspects of the team as they prepare for the regular season. 

“As we look forward to our first real game,  there are still things we haven’t covered and probably won’t get to have the holistic coverage that we would like,  but you make the most of it. We know everyone’s in that same position, but those exhibitions were great… got out a lot of that first game nerves,” Egolf said. 

Along with the head coach and some other coaching staff changes, the rest of the 2025 women’s soccer team is also fairly new to NMU, with over half the team being made up of true freshmen. There is still a good chunk of players returning from last year to help ease the transition with this young team. Among these vets are junior Ava Buhlman and sophomore Irene Kiiluen, who are both defenders.

“Our returners have been very welcoming…the girls have shown up every day with a high level of intensity. The effort’s been off the charts. The attitude’s been great. Now we’re trying to match that with the soccer quality and I think that comes and it stems from a good example from our returners,” coach Egolf said. 

The Wildcats will open up the 2025 season at home on the NMU Soccer Field behind the Superior Dome. The Women’s soccer team will take the field for the first time this season on Friday, Sept. 5 at 1 p.m. The team will face off against St. Cloud University.