Women’s soccer season postponed to spring 2021

Written by: Max Green

Photo by: owlsports.com

On August 25th, 2020 the AAC officially postponed men’s and women’s soccer as well as volleyball to the spring semester. Two days after this announcement on August 27 Women’s Soccer Coach Nick Bochette and senior captain Julia Dolan spoke to the media in reaction to this news.

What came out of the meeting was outside of some unfortunate news the Women’s soccer team while affected will continue to keep working and preparing for this upcoming season now taking place in Spring 2021. 

This starts with first-year head coach Nick Bochette and his staff which Julia Dolan alluded to in one of her quotes, “We met our coaching staff for about a month then we all went on zoom.” This is the first among many obstacles the team has had to deal with over the past couple of months. While Bochette isn’t brand new to the coaching scene he is still a relative newcomer to the team and has had to establish chemistry uniquely and difficulty.

But just like the soccer balls they kick, the Women’s soccer team kicked this problem straight into a goal. Dolan and Bochette both mentioned the many zoom meetings the team has held to form this chemistry. Then Dolan dropped this piece of information to instill confidence in anyone worried about the new members of the team meshing well together.

“We created a leadership council so that we could have girls help out the team, and the leadership council also helped set up team meetings, and team zoom workouts so we could get to know each other.”

Dolan also mentioned how a lot of the team “came back in the summer, and we worked with the strength and conditioning coach in order to get back into it.”  The team continues to show its commitment to getting back in shape and now that all of the team is on campus the opportunities to grow even with the extended offseason.

Coach Bochette continues to speak of the positives of this unfortunate situation. “The NCAA gives about a 2 week to 16 day preseason then we’re straight into games, in all honesty, is rather quick so this year we’re getting a lot more time to prepare.” Bochette detailing the positives of a disappointing piece of news gives great optimism to a season of a lot of uncertainty. From a first-year head coach, this type of optimism is a positive sign not just for this year but in the hopefully many years Coach Bochette will coach at Temple University.

But overall the biggest problem for Temple Women’s Soccer is being broken down by the coach as the opposite. “We must use this time as the Spring that we didn’t have last year” stated Bochette. So while many players surely carry some disappointment towards missing out on this season Coach Bochette preaches to his team to look at the positives, and make up for the lost time.

Temple Women’s Soccer season may have been postponed to the spring, but this team won’t hang their heads in sorrow. Instead, they will continue to keep working and getting back in shape so they can put the best team on the field come Spring 2021.