The Wisconsin women's soccer team will play its home opener Friday night when it goes up against North Dakota State University. The Badgers are riding a four-game winning streak to start the season as they mounted a captivating comeback to beat Baylor last weekend and remain unbeaten. The 3-2 overtime thriller featured two goals from senior forward Marla Froelich-one of the seven seniors leading the charge for the impressive Badgers.
\I think our group of seniors-seven of us from our original class-are a strong leadership group and I think that's been a key to our team's success so far,"" Froelich said. ""This has definitely been our best start since I've been here.""
This weekend they face one tough team in Boston College-whom they will face Sunday night-and another team in North Dakota State that is not perceived as a strong team, but at the same time simply cannot be overlooked.
""We need to keep up our intensity because it's one of those things where we're coming home and maybe it's kind of a weaker team that we're expected to play on Friday, but those kinds of games can bite you in the butt if you let them,"" Froelich said.
Wisconsin will likely keep their same approach as they try to keep their momentum from their early season triumphs on the road, but they understand adjusting once the game begins is a key to getting a win.
""We don't usually scout a whole lot, sometimes we have to mark someone up on air balls or something like that but usually, we focus on our own game,"" Froelich said.
Head Coach Dean Duerst has been very pleased with his team's effort and results so far.
""In our first weekend we played extremely well, but in the second weekend our success was through adversity-[last] Friday night we just put some really great stuff together to hang on and win,"" Duerst said.
The team's young talent seemed to take a blow this week when sophomore standout Kara Kabellis injured her ankle and questions arose about her availability to play this coming weekend. Kabellis was quick to dispel any notion that she will miss action.
""It is feeling good, I just saw the doctors and everything is fine,"" Kabellis said. ""I'll be ready.""
UW will gladly use its offensive capabilities this coming weekend, but Duerst has his eye on his defense in terms of what he feels could be improved upon.
""We need to clear better defensively, we have given up some goals which could have been avoided with better clearance,"" Duerst said. ""We look at little things and say, 'this is a detail I think we can be better at,' and we have to continue to get better as far as our organization defensively.""
Duerst will focus on his team's defense and applying pressure when they square off against NDSU and Boston College.
""The thing about Boston College is their speed and their ability in the air. They have some accomplished and experienced players like us, plus they are very fast,"" Duerst said. ""NDSU is sort of the unknown, so it's a matter of us taking advantage of a young program.""
""The main thing is, a coach always wants consistency within performance, and we want to put back-to-back games together where we start out strong and never let up.\
