Wayne State College’s Women’s soccer team is ready to start their season heading to Mankato, Minnesota on March 19th.  

The team started the season on March 2nd when they began practicing.  

“Before season, we only get eight hours to practice (due to NCAA rules) we use that to lift three days a week, condition twice a week, and practice three days a week,” Chloe Schlines, a defender for the soccer team, said.  

Once the “preseason” ends the team moves into a 45-day period where they can work on their craft 15 hours a week, taking out the conditioning days and transitioning into four days of practice, lifting twice a week then having games on the weekend. 

For Skylar Stueckrath, the main goal is improvement.  

“Improvement is one of the main goals, working on our formations and getting touches on the ball as possible,” Stueckrath said. “The spring is a time to improve individually and as a team, we have a challenging schedule, and I am excited to see how successful we can be.”  

With the majority of the soccer team being underclassmen, Schlines is confident in the team; thinking that with some refinement, the team could be remarkably successful.  

“Our spring goals are [to] continue to improve as a team on things that we are not as confident in and comfortable doing,” Schlines said. 

The women’s wildcat soccer team finished ranked 9th in the NSIC last fall, losing some tough games.  

“We are playing a few teams from our conference this spring that we played last fall,” Schlines said. “We did not get the outcome we wanted in the fall, so hopefully making those improvements and finish with a better result this spring.” 

While having goals to win is always good, the girls handle loses in a serious manner. 

“I view losses as a learning opportunity, going back and watching film to see the mistakes (individually and as a team) and learning how to fix them, to help prepare ourselves to not make those mistakes the next week,” Schlines said.  

For Stueckrath, losing is a mental thing.  

“The most important thing is figuring out where it went wrong then changing it for the next week, over thinking about a game and over analyzing will not help change much, you must let the loss be and move on to the next match,” Stueckrath said. 

The Wildcats play at home for the first time this season on March 25th against Bellevue University at 4:30 p.m.