By Kate Barringer, sports information intern
September 1, 2005

Head coach Steve Smucker returns to his third year with women's soccer and a good number of new faces in 2005. With the addition of nine new athletes, communication on and off the field will be crucial.

Bluffton saw great improvement last year and will look to newcomers to help them improve their 5-11 overall record from 2004.

"Last season we made tremendous strides in improving the level of women's soccer at Bluffton," Sumcker said. "The team also improved in scoring, tallying 21 goals in the 2004 season. This was a significant improvement from the 2003 season where we only scored 4 times"

With the addition of nine new players (seven freshmen and two sophomores) it will be imperative that everyone gets on the same page. Leadership will be looked up from the two seniors, Rachael Stine (Dayton/Milton Union) and Gina Berelsman (Delphos/Jefferson) to share their knowledge from the past three years.

Sophomore Kenzey Meyer (Hilliard/Hilliard Darby) returns for the squad as she saw action in 10 games as a freshman and will be looked upon for her finishing ability.   Sophomore Lauren Fairchild (Toledo/Whitmer) also saw action in 13 games along with sophomore Ashley Bloom (Tiffin/Calvert) who will step in as goalkeeper taking over for graduate Rochelle Saccomen who protected the goal over the last four years.

"Some of our goals will be to stay together, stay connected on the field, and keep things simple in our play," Smucker said.  "Defensively we will need to work at limiting the number of scoring opportunities of our opponents, and offensively we want to create even more scoring chances than we had last year. Also, our team will need to learn as much as possible in the coming weeks so that when our conference games begin, we're ready to contend for a tournament spot."

-BEAVERS-