Today is her first entry of the campaign as she chronicles the adventures of the team during her senior season.
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Greetings Panther Fans! Kelsey Holbert here, back this year without my blogger-in-crime, Morgan LaPlant, from last season’s world famous 'Blog It Like Beckham'. OK, maybe not world famous, but definitely pretty fun. For any new readers, thanks for stopping in! I hope to give you some inside scoop on this year’s Milwaukee Women’s Soccer team. Or squaaaaaaad, as some of our players might say.
For those of you who read last year, thank you and welcome back! Expect a little bit more soccer talk and perhaps a little bit less fun—that was always Morgan’s specialty. To introduce myself, I am a fifth-year senior midfielder. I medically redshirted my senior season after a foot and ankle injury in the second game of the season. It was a long year filled with far too much crutching and not enough soccer for my liking. And while I admittedly feel a bit (okay, very) old, I am extremely excited to be back on the field this year with my Panthers!
In this blog and otherwise, we certainly miss our wonderful 2014 senior class. We wish them the best of luck in each of their next chapters, which have taken them all over, but are all very exciting. Don’t forget about us, ladies!
That said, we have been very encouraged so far and are excited for what the rest of the 2015 season has to offer. With the majority of the team (21 players) being freshmen or sophomores, our young roster undoubtedly has big shoes to fill. So far, many girls have stepped up and contributed to a successful first six games of the season. We welcome 12 new players to the team, as well as three coaches for their first fall with UWM. With such big changes, the transition has been remarkably smooth and we continue to grow as a group.
We started the season with an exciting 1-0 home opener against Western Illinois. Our only two losses came on our first road trip, where we lost to Illinois State (3-1 after scoring first) and then to a solid Butler team (1-0 on a PK). However, a crucial come-back win on the road against Northern Illinois got us back on track and opened a good week for us.
We then faced our first Wisconsin foe, the Wisconsin Badgers. We saw (and were really jealous of!) what an impressive crowd the men’s team attracted for their first home rivalry, against Marquette. We were overwhelmed to see another amazing turnout for our match. The environment at Engelmann on a crisp fall night with that many fans and a very solid opponent… it just does not get better than that. It was an absolute blast, and though we would have hoped to be more of an offensive threat, we walked off the field with some well-earned Panther Pride.
We wrapped up the week with a win over Chicago State, in which many Panthers saw good minutes and a second half surge of scoring brought us a nice win. We look forward to a good week of training in advance of a big road trip to Oakland University for our first conference match.
Since I covered so many weeks into a short post— I thought some superlatives might highlight some tidbits from the season so far:
Best Dancers: LoLo Onwuemeka and Lauren Rice
Most Interesting Warm-up CD: Chicago State
My Best Roommate: Olivia Wright
Best (Longest) Snap Stories: Sydney Senn
Least Favorite Weight Room Exercise: Pull-Ups
Best Ride to Practice: The Scooter Girls
Best Food So Far: Chipotle, obviously
Best Bus Sleeping Face: Jen Eberhardy
That’s all for now, but more superlatives, soccer talk, and fun to come! We know there is a lot of great soccer coming out of both the men’s and women’s teams this year. I look forward to writing about our season and reading about the men’s through (Dustin’s Blog)!
Thanks Panther fans. Have a lovely week!
Kelsey
