Last year proved to be a roller coaster ride for the girls soccer team. 

With a 7-9-1 record, the team relied on many underclassmen to lead the way with few upperclassmen to provide steady leadership. That inexperience and youth was an aspect of last season that head coach Darren Erpelding said made it difficult to find a high level of consistency.  

“So this year, I want to improve on that, being able to finish games and stay consistent,” he said. “We weren’t consistent.” 

Now with more experience and playing time under their belt, Erpelding expects more favorable results and a specific group within the team to step up this season. 

“I expect a lot more from the juniors especially,” Erpelding said. “In all honesty, I don’t see this as a team that has one or two leaders. We’ve got five or six that can lead pretty well, and I’m pretty happy with that.” 

The Cardinals also have more seniors to rely on, including Liz Mueting, who will play a leadership role this season. 

Mueting said last year lacked a large group of leaders and how much more important having that will be for this season.  

“We lost two really good seniors last year who were really big leaders,” Mueting said. “So I think it’ll be very important that we have a couple of leaders step up this season.” 

Mueting also said it will be important to start off this season on a good note to set the tone. 

“Last season I felt like we got, like, into a little drag,” Mueting said. “I don’t know if it was just because we weren’t as conditioned, but we just needed more energy and because people are getting down on themselves and tired almost. So hopefully, if we just keep that energy going through the entire season because, right now, it’s looking pretty good.” 

Jayla Erpelding agreed with Mueting when it came to starting the season strong. She also mentioned a specific aspect of her own game that she needs to focus on coming into the new season. 

“I need to focus on keeping emotions under control when things aren’t going my way,” Erpelding said. “When I don’t score or I don’t hit the right passing, I definitely get very frustrated and I’ll take it out on everyone around me.”  

Along with an expected increase in leadership, Darren Erpelding wants to see a more diverse scoring attack from the team. He said it’s important not to get complacent in the attack and rely on limited scoring outputs. 

“To score, we kind of rely on one or two girls that take a lot of the shots and I don’t want that,” he said. “I want to be able to open it up more and have more girls be more aggressive in front of net to where we don’t rely on just those two or three.” 

The Cardinals kick off their season at home Tuesday when they face Bishop Miege. 

Reach reporter Nathan Swaffar at [email protected].

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