Women's Soccer Preview

The BVU women’s soccer team kicked off their season Tuesday afternoon in Storm Lake as the Beavers took on the Lancers of Mount Marty College. BVU would score 52 seconds in the game and lead the entire first half, but Mount Marty broke through the Beaver defense in the second half to come away with a 3-1 win.

Head coach Hunter Balmer felt BVU had more opportunities to score in the game.

“I think we were getting a lot of good pressure and a lot of good chances in the first half, but we weren’t really taking advantage of some of what they were giving us,” Balmer said.

Sophomore Justine McGarvey had a good game in-goal for BVU, tallying five saves. First-year Kellyn Arnold and sophomore Kelsey Reitmeier each had four total shots for the Beavers.

Balmer was overall pleased with the Beavers preseason efforts.

“We were very fortunate this year to come out of preseason without any major injuries,” Balmer said. “It’s a very good thing and a great change from some of the years past.”

Balmer says the Beavers are aware of areas that are strong for them at this time and know where they still need to improve. One of those areas is defense.

“Mainly as a team,” Balmer says. “But particularly starting to cut down on the number of shots that we give up and more particularly than that, shots that we are giving up in really dangerous areas.”

When asked about the battle for top of the conference, Balmers believes the typical teams will remain good.

“Well I think you’re probably going to see the teams that were at the top of the conference [last year], Loras and Wartburg, look like they should be very, very solid again this year. I know they both have a lot of returning players, so I wouldn’t expect too much difference there,” Balmer said.

For BVU to be in the hunt for a conference tournament spot, Balmers believes the Beavers need to simply win the games they need to and use the momentum from those games as fuel for games against the harder opponents.

“We always set our sights on trying to improve our standings in the conference and that’s the number one priority, but I think we have a lot of goals off the field too, particularly, making sure we’re strong academically, continuing to function well as a team off the field, and I think just being good members of the college community as well,” Balmer said.