After the soccer team’s impressive wins last weekend, head coach Dan Abdalla said he is interested to see how the momentum carries into the start of conference play this weekend.With a victory against Sam Houston on Friday, followed by another win against Boise State on Sunday, the Horned Frogs hit the road to play Utah and Brigham Young this weekend.
“It’ll be interesting to see how we match up against them on the field, but if the kids play the way they did last weekend, we should be in good shape to be competitive and give ourselves a chance to win,” Abdalla said. “We practice all season to build up to the conference games, and, hopefully, we can continue to raise our level of play in every game.”
This marks the first real road trip for the Frogs, who carry a winning record of 5-4 into the tournament along with the extra momentum from last weekend.
Sophomore midfielder Lauren Pope said she feels excited and says the team is playing better together now than ever before.
“I’m really excited after this weekend,” Pope said. “After these last two wins, we’re just playing better with each other and getting more organized and connecting more as a team.”
Junior defender Breanne Kaldheim says the team has an extra boost going into conference play along with its momentum from last weekend.
“We’re excited that we get to start conference play,” Kaldheim said. “Our coach has a lot of knowledge about the conference already, which really brings a lot to the table. I think that if we play like we did last weekend while being more efficient and cleaning some things up, then we’ll have a real good chance (this weekend).”
Abdalla was the head coach at UNLV for five years before moving on to TCU this season.
While there, he fielded teams that showed consistent improvement every year up until last season, when his team was ranked fourth in the preseason polls and cruised into the NCAA tournament with a 5-1 league mark.
He was named the MWC Coach of the Year, as well as the runner up for National Coach of the year last season despite losing to 21st ranked San Diego in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
The Rebels still finished with a 12-5-2 overall record and sent three players to the First Team All-America squad with one of them, Annii Magliulo, being named offensive player of the year.
Sophomore forward Bjarnveig Birgisdottir capped off the strong weekend by becoming the first soccer player to earn the honor of MWC Offensive Player of the Week in the new conference with her hat trick Friday and her game-winning goal Sunday.
The team leaves for Utah on Wednesday to play the Utes on Thursday before traveling to BYU to battle the Cougars on Saturday.
