Photo from WCU Athletics.
While cats are traditionally known for batting around balls of yarn, it seems like the Catamounts have more of a penchant for soccer balls.
The Western Carolina women’s soccer team will take on East Tennessee State University in Cullowhee Friday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m.
ETSU has played the same teams that Western has, Mercer and The Citadel, yet have only one win to show for their effort. WCU Associate head coach Todd Herman seemed fairly at ease over the competition.
“You hope to not change too much. Obviously, with injuries and playing a different type of team, you have to tweak a couple things but I think we will do business as usual. The most important part is trying to get a little bit better each week … you have to balance out getting better and winning at the same time, so we won’t change too much,” Herman said.
Western has secured two victories, both shutouts, in the Southern Conference thus far; their best start to conference play since 2009. This leaves the Cats in a very good place, being one of only two unbeaten teams at the end of the first week of the conference season.
The first victory came in a 1-0 win at Mercer on Sept. 23 and the second in a 3-0 thrashing at The Citadel on Sept. 25. These two important clean sheets mean that the Cats have been scoring goals without conceding any for the last 3 games they have played. This statistic is good news following a turbulent preseason.
Kasey Cooke, who opened the scoring at The Citadel with her 4 goal of the season, had some optimistic words in regards to the last few games.
“Coming off of preseason we started a little rocky, but we started working our way up and learning each other. Then something clicked; this weekend was huge for us. Two and zero. We haven’t done that since 2009 which is incredible and it gives us a motivation going into playing our travel partner [East Tennessee State University] this weekend which is going to be a really good game,” said Cooke while taking a short break from practice.
