AMHERST – Back in May, a month after the UMass women’s soccer team’s abbreviated spring season ended, coach Jason Dowiak couldn’t wait to get started again in August.
Then August hit.
“It was like, where’d all the time go?” Dowiak said.
The Minutewomen were preparing to open the 2021 spring season Thursday at Penn State just four months after their spring season ended in the Atlantic 10 semifinals. They’ll feature 22 freshmen and sophomores and just three seniors. Many of the new arrivals were on campus in July building relationships and learning how each other plays.
“We try to play a possession-based style. We won’t change that, but this is definitely the most pace-y, most athletic team… height-size, the tallest team we’ve had since I’ve been here. We’re going to try and enhance our effectiveness going forward with that pace,” Dowiak said. “We’ve got the creative players, and now we’ve got the athleticism to stretch teams out. And hopefully we can play well enough to use it all together.”
There are 19 players back from last year’s squad.
“I think that we entered the season really hungry because we should have won the last game that knocked us out of the playoffs,” senior Mia Carazza said. “It really motivates us for the upcoming games and the whole entire season.”
The Minutewomen plan to lean on the sense of community and team culture they’ve built. They eat together and hold meetings about things other than soccer to understand each other better.
“I feel like we genuinely, as humans, care about each other,” senior Ava Jouvenel said.
That matters in a game where the impact of coaching is limited once the whistle blows. Players are largely on their own to make decisions and depend on each other and their communication and understanding of who is going to be where and what they’re going to do.
“Knowing you have a group of 30 people that you know have your back makes it easier to be yourself and be the player you know you can be,” Carazza said. “We make each other compete really hard because we care about each other and we care about pushing each other.”
All of that striving is in search of an Atlantic 10 title. The Minutewomen fell two games short in the spring. They haven’t claimed a conference title or been to the NCAA Tournament since 1997. UMass was picked fifth in the preseason A-10 poll, while defending champion Saint Louis was predicted to repeat with 13 first-place votes. The Minutewomen are coming off consecutive A-10 semifinal appearances for the first time since 2000.
“We succeeded in the spring under really difficult circumstances. We were limited in numbers, we were worried about who was available on any given day,” said Dowiak, who is 27-17-5 in three seasons at UMass. “That’s been our goal for year four, is to compete for the championship this year. I think we have the tools. It’s just can we get the young players all on the same page.”
They’ll get a great sense of where they’re at early against the Nittany Lions. Penn State reached the third round of last spring’s NCAA Tournament. The Nittany Lions won the 2015 national championship and have been to the College Cup five times.
“We’ve been talking about this game for months. We’ve been so excited. It’s a great opportunity for us. Obviously we know it’s not going to be easy. We look forward to it,” Jouvenel said. “We’re excited to show what we can do and compare ourselves to one of the best teams in the country.”
Penn State enters the fall as the No. 10 team in the country. The program lost just once at home last season.
“If anything, it’s going to be a great way to start and show everybody this is what it’s like to be on a Division I soccer team right from the start. It’s flooding us. It’s an honor to match against someone that awesome,” Carazza said. “It’s exciting to be able to play against the Penn States, the UCLAs, the UNCs. You grow up looking up to those people and even when you play Division I soccer you still look up to them. It’s pretty cool.”
Dowiak started installing concepts in preparing for Penn State earlier than he has for any other opponent. The Nittany Lions were the fifth-highest scoring team in the country last season at 2.69 goals per game.
“They’re very efficient. A lot of teams need multiple chances to get goals. They don’t seem to need a lot of chances to score,” he said. “We’re going to try and make them beat us in a different way than they were having success in the spring.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.