by Justin Goodrum
Daily Lobo
Last season, the women's soccer team made a run to the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game and held a 2-0-1 record against top-25 competition.
On Thursday, the team got a taste of what's to come in 2006 when they scrimmaged against Fort Lewis. UNM defeated the Division II Skyhawks 3-0.
Junior midfielder Anna Neu said it's going to take some time to integrate the new players with the veterans.
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"We need to work them into our team," she said. "They need to learn how we play, and we need to learn how they play."
Head coach Kit Vela said the team had a tough week of practice, which made the scrimmage more of a challenge for the Lobos.
"We were fatigued," Vela said. "We went this morning. We did two yesterday, so we're fatigued because of double days."
Fort Lewis and UNM played a set of 30-minute scrimmages in front of fans in Albuquerque at Robertson Field. Juniors Neu, Amber Wetsch and sophomore Hannah Hand scored the goals for the Lobos.
Vela said winning wasn't as important as the experience. She said she was happy with the victory but more focused on getting the players some playing time.
"That's why you want to scrimmage," she said. "It doesn't really matter what the result is. What you want to see by the end of the game is that we are doing the things we're good at."
Senior forward Bridgette Sanchez said her team fought through the adversity of tough preseason practices to perform well in the scrimmage.
"I think for being in the middle of preseason we did pretty good, because we were pretty tired," Sanchez said.
The defense will have a new key player as Shannon Adragna takes the starting goalkeeper spot, replacing Kristen Winters. An influx of new talent, including NAIA Region XIV Player of the Year Mary-Kate Sliter, who transferred to UNM from Savannah College of Art and Design this season, gives the Lobos more weapons for the upcoming season.
"Overall, the youth and experience really is what is giving us great depth - something we've never had before," assistant coach Jorge Vela said.
The Lobos have a tough schedule on paper this season, facing six NCAA tournament teams from last season, including the University of Texas, the University of Washington and Washington State University.
"It always helps us to have a good non-conference schedule to get us into conference and prepare us," Vela said. "Every year, if you look at our schedule the last five years, every team had a really tough non-conference schedule."
Jorge Vela said the Lobos want to surpass what they did last season and advance to the postseason this year.
"We want to contend for a
championship in the conference," he said. "We believe we can do it. We want to take this team for the first time ever to the NCAAs. We have the talent. Every game we play is going to build to our main goal."
The Lobos start off their season with a tournament in Akron, Ohio, against Canisius College on Aug 25.
