The Women’s soccer team took preparations and practices to compete against the No. nine UT Austin Longhorns Thursday Aug 31.
Head Coach Mark Foster prepared the team not only physically but mentally for a fast paced game against the Longhorns.
“They’re ranked number nine this week so you’re playing against one of the best teams in the country but it’s still soccer,” Foster said. “They’ll be bigger, stronger, faster and most things will be what we usually see but just a lot faster paced so we’ve been trying to encourage the girls to be a little more focused and mentally ready for that intensity that they all bring.”
Junior defender Nadia Colon explained what the team has worked on for the solid match.
“Well we’ve had wins and losses so far and we’ve picked up on what we need to work on and stuff that we are very strong and we are using that as gears on our next game,” Colon said.
In previous games the team has played against other strong schools like Texas A&M, Corpus Christi and the University of Incarnate Word.
“In a short amount of time we’ve honestly done so well picking up on each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “ We have a lot of versatility going on between the whole roster so we can play different positions and we feed off of each other and for the games. It just makes us unpredictable.”
Team chemistry plays a big role early in the season. Freshman midfielder Ayloni Garcia talks about what the team chemistry looks like on and off the field.
“The team chemistry is pretty good,” Garcia said. “ We always have the team bonding moments like no ones ever alone, no one walks alone especially in the locker room everybody gets hyped up.”
The Vaqueros fell to the Longhorns with a score of 5-0.
Looking forward to the Vaqueros season, Foster discussed the plan for the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) play.
“We have more home games this year,” he said. “We need to make this a hard place to play and this is where we need to get most of our points if we are going to qualify for the tournament which is one of our goals.”
The ladies first conference game is against the Abilene Christian University Wildcats at 6:30 p.m. on Sep. 21 at the UTRGV Soccer and Track & Field complex.
For more information visit goutrgv.com
This is Kevynne Aleman for Vaquero Radio.
