One week after the fall 2011 season closed, junior defender Claire O’Keeffe and the rest of the women’s soccer team were craving an opportunity to get back on the field and compete. The spring season allows the team to get back out there, try some new things and grow together before the fall season, O’Keeffe said.
“It’s fun. Without a spring season I don’t know what we would do,” she said. “Spring is really important for our development. Everything is focused around not only the team, but also individually.”
Since the spring games will not count towards their record, head coach Chris Neal said he will be able to experiment how the team plays and learn more about each player’s strong points. He said he does not want to go into this fall season not knowing each of his players’ full potential.
“The most important goal is to find out as much about our players’ positional abilities,” Neal said. “When we go into the fall, I don’t want to look back and go, ‘I wonder if Chelsey Stark can play attack and center-midfield,’ because I want to find that out in the spring.”
The spring is about the younger players on the team building toughness both mentally and physically, Neal said. His goal is to better prepare the team to win in the fall by focusing on the technical side of the game and helping them become smarter players.
“Coach has put a huge emphasis on defending this spring, which is definitely something we need to improve on,” O’Keeffe said. “(We need) to let less goals in and be more tenacious, never hiding, always doing your part and not passing roles.”
The rising upperclassmen on the team will use these spring games to see where the team is now that the seniors have left and what holes the incoming freshmen need to fill, said Simi Dhaliwal, a sophomore forward. These games will show where people thrive on the field, she said.
“This spring is a chance for the two new captains to cut their teeth and start figuring out how they lead,” Neal said. “It is also interesting to see some of these sophomores who are going to be juniors naturally speak up more and seek more responsibility.”
During the spring season, each team is allowed five days to play as many games as they would like. The first day of matches will be Feb. 29, with games against University of North Carolina at Greensboro, one of the team’s rivals, and Duke University, the national runner-up. Other schools in the team’s schedule include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.
“We have a lot of history with (UNC-Greensboro), but skill-wise playing teams like Duke and Chapel Hill are some of the top teams in the nation,” Dhaliwal said. “We are excited to play with them and compare ourselves with them. We should be on that level.”
The biggest challenge for the team will be knowing they are good enough to compete against teams like Duke, Dhaliwal said. The team needs to just play like it is another soccer team and not let the reputation of their competitors get into their heads, O’Keeffe added.
“We can level with the other teams,” Dhaliwal said. “We are really confident about our team this year, which is a change. It is going to be different.”
The spring season was almost canceled by administration in an attempt to cut costs, Neal said. A petition signed by coaches and about 9,000 athletes resulted in a veto of the legislation. While it may be different for other schools, Neal said the spring season is inexpensive for Elon because the university only has to pay for the gas to and from games.
The players are simply getting the more valuable currency: real game experience. For a team with just one senior, that experience is worth any price that needs to be paid. Even just a few more laps at practice.