The Marquette women’s soccer team picked up this spring where it left off last fall with a current spring record of 4-0-1, especially in its most recent win over defending 2010 national champion Notre Dame 3-2 on April 19.
The Golden Eagles will wrap up their spring with matches against Northwestern and DePaul Saturday at Valley Fields.
Though the spring is often seen as more of a tune-up period, the team shows no indications of taking its final two matches lightly.
“The main thing is improving on what we need to and go out without losing,” sophomore midfielder Megan Jaskowiak said. “I know that DePaul is in the Big East and they always want to beat us, so we’re going to go out and play as hard as we can to get the win.”
Junior goalkeeper Natalie Kulla also wants to keep the team’s success rolling as she feels there are still areas that the Golden Eagles need to improve upon.
“Going undefeated in the (spring) season would be nice, and I think we can use these games as one more chance to improve on the things we might not have done as well in the last game,” Kulla said. “We beat DePaul in the fall and advanced to the final four (of the Big East Championship tournament), so I know they will be out for revenge.”
Coach Markus Roeders is pleased with his players’ efforts so far this spring season, but said he wants them to finish strong heading into the long summer break.
“Ideally, we’d like to play our best soccer of the spring yet,” Roeders said. “We’ve had five days over the Easter break where we didn’t get to train, and this week is still about getting ourselves set up (for the fall). But knowing our players, the goal will be to go undefeated in the spring, which will take a couple of wins on Saturday.”
Roeders hopes that Marquette’s final two spring matches will continue to show the improvement of several players that will have to fill voids left by the graduation of seniors.
“I think (sophomore) Rachel Brown, our center midfielder, is doing very well, and she’s coming around after she started a little bit slower earlier in the spring,” Roeders said. “She’s stepping into a role we need to fill based upon what we lost with our seniors.
“I think we have five or six players that have been really consistent and grown a lot more mature this spring.”
