The Cabrini women’s soccer team has gotten off to a strong start this 2019 season. The Lady Cavaliers are no stranger to success, as they have won 10 conference championships since 1994 and made nine NCAA tournament appearances since 2003. The team is currently 7-2-1, with their most recent win being against Penn State Abington with a score of 2-1 on Tuesday, Oct. 1.
The team believes that the reason for their success has been because of their teamwork and ability to work well with one another, along with their shared enthusiasm for the sport.
“I think for our team, we have been playing with a lot of heart, so every year that’s not something that we tend to struggle with,” Marissa Portelli, exercise science & health promotion major, team captain and senior back, said. “Our team does a really good job of playing our hardest all the time, even if the score may not reflect that. We always give it our all when we’re out there on the field, so I feel like this year, in particular, [that] we’ve been playing as hard as we can every single game that we’ve been out there.”
Maddy Wojton, early childhood and special education major, team captain and senior back, believes that the team has been doing a good job with their out-of-conference play and that their schedule is a good balance of being just competitive enough to push them, but also gives them games to work on the things that they need to improve on.
“I think we’ve been doing a good job with our out-of-conference schedule and like really stressing the importance of that, and making those games count,” Wojton said.
Both Portelli and Wojton agree that there is room for improvement in certain areas, such as scoring, but that with practice they can resolve these difficulties.
“We can’t win the game unless we score,” Portelli said. “That and probably just our touches and like the simple little things that you can clean up are probably our big areas right now that we could work on.”
“Definitely scoring, definitely our little touches,” Wojton said. “I guess like on the field, like moving off the ball too, that’s always a big one.”
As for the team’s strengths, Portelli believes that the team’s strong suits are playing with passion and being resilient.
“I think one of the best strengths we have right now is our team chemistry,” Ken Prothero, head coach, said. “They work hard, they get along well on and off the field and you can tell by the way they play that they can just connect with each other, and I think the team chemistry has to do a lot with our success.”
“I think we have a veteran team and we’ve got a couple young players that are really starting to add to what we’ve been doing the last couple years,” he said.
Rebekah Cunningham, an undecided major and freshman back, believes that the team is really close and connected to one another which helps in how they play.
“We all love each other,” Cunningham said. “We go out together, we go to get food together, we hang out with each other whenever we can, like we really all are just a bunch of friends that love the sport.”
