The women’s soccer team hopes to build on the success they had last year, when they finished second overall in the country at the CIS Championships. However, they will be doing it without Eilish McConville, the striker with the golden touch who led the CIS with 22 goals last year.
McConville was named the national player of the year in women’s soccer, received the PHE ’55 Alumnae Trophy as Queen’s top female athlete, and was the OUA’s female nominee for the BLG Awards, given annually to the top male and female university athletes in the country.
Women’s head coach Dave McDowell said replacing McConville will be a tall order for his team.
“Obviously, Eilish was a huge part of almost every scoring chance we had last year. No individual is going to replace her, but maybe the group as a whole can come forward and create some of the opportunities that she created,” he said, adding that the team’s losses are not limited to McConville alone.
“We graduate four key starters and six senior players overall, who were
tremendously influential.” However, McDowell is optimistic about his incoming crop of recruits.
“We worked pretty hard at recruiting, and we like the group we have coming in,” he said. “We think it’s a very good group, but until you see them play together and how they fit in with our returning players, you never know.” McDowell said the team expects to go into this season with 11 to 12
first-year players.
“It’s been a decent recruiting year. We missed out on a few that might have made it a world-class recruiting year, but that’s life in the university recruiting game.”
McDowell said there are high expectations for his team after last year’s success.
“I think it’s always hard to match that year after year,” he said. “We graduate some very key players from that group; it was a fairly senior-laden team. I think it’s going to be a very young team this year, so it will be a different group.”
McDowell said the team’s training camp
will let him see how the new players work together.
“I think we have some good young players coming in, but you never know how players are going to mesh, what the chemistry of the group will be like, things like that. That’s something we have to see when they arrive in training camp,” he said. “There are lots of teams throughout the world who are built around lots of good players, but don’t kind of blend as a group. We’re hoping to quickly get these guys to mesh and be right back where we have been.”
The men’s soccer team is also looking to improve upon their strong performance last season. The team won the OUA East Division, finished fourth in Ontario, and narrowly missed a trip to the CIS championships.
Head coach Al MacVicar said the team’s play last year came as a surprise to many.
“Before the season started, many had picked us to have a rebuilding season, and many thought that we weren’t going to be very successful to be honest, and we actually proved a lot of people wrong,” he said.
The Gaels will graduate some key players, including two of their four captains from last year. Alex Makin, entering his final year of eligibility, is the only captain from last year returning in a playing role. Chris Gencarelli, another former captain, is still struggling with the knee injury he sustained last season and likely will have to undergo surgery, but will be ing the Gaels’ coaching staff this year.
“It will be great to have him on board,” MacVicar said.
Despite the losses to graduation, MacVicar said the team has a strong core of returning players and there will be a lot of competition for spots.
“We usually carry a roster of about 27 players. We have around 21 returning players, which is very positive for us,” he said, adding that a few players hadn’t yet decided if they were returning or not.
“We’re looking forward to a very competitive training camp. This is possibly the highest number of inquiries I’ve ever had, which has been very good.” MacVicar said he expects between 30 and 40 new players to try out for the team during their two-week training camp. “A lot of talented players have expressed interest in coming out to the training camp to try out, so we’ve got a lot of tough decisions ahead,” he said. “There’s no guarantees for anybody, so players should fight that much harder for the positions.”
MacVicar said his team has their work cut out for them this season, but he thinks they’re up to the challenge.
“We’re not going to be flying under the radar this year, and teams will really be gunning for us, so we do have to be even more motivated and even more prepared this year.”
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