Idaho opens Big Sky play with Northern Colorado
It is a new beginning for the Idaho soccer team as it shifts its focus to the first Big Sky game Friday against Northern Colorado at Guy Wicks Field.
The team’s main goal is still to get into the conference tournament and advance as far as possible in the single elimination format, Idaho Coach Derek Pittman said. Nonconference play does not affect conference seeding as it is based on the team’s Big Sky record.
The UNC Bears (5-4-1) and the rest of the Big Sky might overlook the winless Vandals as they enter the conference, but that’s OK, said sophomore midfielder Elexis Schlossarek.
“They are a very good team, we are going to have to give them a lot of respect, but we are not going to be afraid of them,” Pittman said. “We are going to go at them and attack them the way we have our previous opponents.”
Schlossarek said the team is going to go in fighting and show the rest of the teams in the conference that Idaho is a tough team, despite the team’s record and being the new team in the conference. The Vandals want to be the team that comes out and fights hard every week, she said.
Pittman said the Vandals are the new kids on the block so they have to make sure they go out and represent Idaho well.
“It is a little bit of a fresh beginning and it doesn’t matter what our record is at this point,” he said.
The new conference is a new beginning of sorts, Schlossarek said.
“We have a lot of ‘news’ this year — new coaches, new conference, a lot of new players and I think we were excited for that,” she said. “We wanted a new beginning and we wanted to go into this conference and make a difference.”
In both of the team’s losses last weekend, to Grand Canyon and Arizona respectively, the team played well at times but just needed to finish, Pittman said.
Pittman is pleased with the strides his team has made on defense, which should help create more scoring opportunities to take some of the pressure off of the defense, he said.
“We don’t know a whole lot about them, they don’t know a whole lot about us,” Schlossarek said. “We are all really excited for it and I love not knowing about other teams because you don’t know if they are better than you or not, and they don’t know if we are better than them or not, so it is even ground.”
Joshua Gamez can be reached at [email protected]