After dismal season, women’s soccer looks to offseason

Pitt’s women’s soccer team may have ended its fall season by dropping a one-goal game to… Pitt’s women’s soccer team may have ended its fall season by dropping a one-goal game to West Virginia, but come Tuesday, a new one begins.

The Panthers will start offseason training next Monday — a few weeks earlier than last year — after a downhill season where the team only took home two victories. The annual postseason program puts players through grueling workouts and drills designed to put them in better physical shape.

Given that the team had its worst season in more than a decade, this offseason will help the understrength Pitt squad move forward.

“I think that, especially after this year, the offseason is going to be a main focus for us because of how rough of a season we had,” sophomore Katie Lippert said.

The players will begin by lifting weights and running three times a week with the team’s strength coach to improve conditioning and overall fitness, traits that head coach Sue-Moy Chin called “extremely important” to her team’s success.

“You have to be mentally strong and physically fit,” Chin said. “That definitely plays a role in being able to outlast and outrun opponents. We want to take pride in our fitness and strength, and the gains that we make.”

While understanding the importance of the workouts, some players loathe the idea of constantly training without any interaction with a soccer ball.

“I’m already dreading going into it,” sophomore and offseason workout veteran Caroline Keefer said. “It’s not fun at all. It’s a lot of hard work. But it definitely does help us.”

She said it’s hard starting the training because the Panthers don’t actually play a game until the end of March.

“It’s a lot of hard work … without seeing any rewards for it, since you can’t play or do anything like that,” Keefer said. “As it winds down into March — around the end of February — it starts to feel like soccer again and not like they’re running us to death.”

Lippert, who suffered a torn hamstring in a game against Rutgers on Sept. 23 and hasn’t played since, said she is anxious to get back to being active.

“I’m sure most of the girls are dreading the start of training, but I’ve been out for so long that I can’t wait to start running and playing again,” she said. “I wasn’t the strongest when I came to Pitt. But your offseason is when you’re able to build your strength, and I think that’s going to be my main focus. The running is extremely difficult, so by the end of training you’re probably in one of the best shapes that you’ve been in. It’s worth it.”

The Panthers began this season with 22 players, eight fewer than most teams. Numerous injuries further depleted their already thin roster. Coach Chin pointed to this as a possible reason for her team only managing two wins this year. She also said that added strength can help prevent such injuries from happening.

“We were very unfortunate with the numbers [of healthy players] this year,” Chin said. “We had a lot of injuries that depleted our numbers. So our girls have to be extremely fit to play 90 minutes, Friday and Sunday, every weekend. Most of them played 90 minutes, and it takes a toll on you.”

Coach Chin said that Pitt’s roster, which currently includes nine freshmen, six sophomores, four juniors, and one returning senior, will be infused with an incoming freshman class of “at least 10” athletes, adding the depth and competition that was noticeably absent from her team this season.

“What I see with the freshman class is that we have some good players coming in and depth at every position,” she said. “I think it’s going to create competition at every position — we lacked that this year because of the numbers. If someone wasn’t performing, it was tough because you didn’t have people to replace them. The competition in the fall will be greater because instead of having one girl competing against you, you’re going to have four or five girls competing for the same position. It’ll help with the training. It’ll help with the focus and our overall team dynamic.”

With the core of the team returning, the arrival of a deep freshman class and the improvements that are expected to be made in offseason training, Chin and the players both said that they expect better outcomes next year.

“Our goal is to compete and win a Big East championship, and that’s going to be our focus going forward,” Chin said. “Our goals aren’t going to change next year just because of the year that we had. If anything, we’re more determined to do better.”

Keefer said she expects the Panthers to have a better season next year, and to at least make the tournament and earn a winning record.

“I just think that we’re a big school that should also have a big program,” Keefer said. “Things went wrong this year. We were building last year, then it all kind of fell. But I think that we started to pick up where we left off at the end of the season. It should only go up from there.”