The Chaminade University women’s soccer team will play its first home game at Saint Louis Field on Saturday against Hawaii Hilo. The game will kick off at 12 p.m. for the team’s last non-conference game of the season.
The Silverswords have meshed together quickly, which is evident by looking defensively sharp and keeping three clean sheets in their first three games. Chaminade will look for this to be the difference maker for the season. The team will look to take this strong defensive teamwork into the final third of the field and motivate each other to score goals starting in their first home game against Hilo on Saturday.
“You can push a lot harder for people that you care about and you trust, so I think that’s really one of their biggest strengths,” said head coach Michelle Richardson, who is in her 13th season. “Along with the fact that they work hard and they’re working for one another all the time.”
Chaminade finished sixth last year in the competitive PacWest conference, which sent four teams to the National Tournament, making it one of the best conferences in the nation. Chaminade was voted into the sixth-place spot in the PacWest preseason poll, but it plans to compete for one of those top four spots and make the PacWest championships.
“For us to be in competition in that top four, we have to be consistent, and in the middle of the season when things get really challenging, we have to be gritty enough to stay consistent through that,” said head coach Richardson. “So for me it’s going to be more about our mental toughness than anything else.”
The season has started with three stalemates against Chico State, Westminster, and Hawaii Pacific University, all finishing as 0-0 ties. The Silverswords look to find their first win of the season at St. Louis Field on Saturday against Hilo.
Conference play begins on the road for Chaminade in Northern California on Sept. 25 and continues at home for a five-game stretch that is capped off with senior day on Oct. 25 against Westmont. Chaminade will look to take advantage of the home games, similar to last season, where it went 5-1-1 at home. The season finishes on the road with another two games in Northern California and the final match at Hilo on Nov. 6.
The Silverswords find themselves with an even mixture of returners and new players. There are 15 players returning, six of whom were starters on last year’s team that went 6-5-5. While 11 new players join the team, three are transfers, and the rest are freshmen. The team is nothing short of experienced, being led by eight seniors and two fifth-year players. Including senior captain Haley Mo’okini, who leads the team in career goals with 10, and has started 47 games in her three seasons at Chaminade.
“We have standards for everyone, and this allows us to make each other better,” said Mo’okini, a defender. “We have to push for one another the whole season. We all get tired, but we tell ourselves to do it for the team, not just ourselves.”
Mo’okini is not the only key returner, as senior Madelynne Knowd will be another key component. Knowd started all 16 games last season and played the full 90 minutes for 12 games, which finished her second on the team for minutes played. She will look to step into the shoes of one of the key losses from last season Gracie Knowd, who led the team with four goals and earned 2nd team All PacWest honors. The Silverswords will have Junior Maddie Merrick, a transfer from Division I Creighton University, as the team’s new starting goalkeeper.
With nearly a dozen new players added to the team, Richardson put an emphasis on team bonding on and off the field. This summer, the team made support groups that were led by leaders who were selected at the end of the spring season. These groups brought the returners and new players closer before the season even started. The groups would support and push each other through summer training and fitness to get ready for the season. They also would go to the beach together to bond off the field and build a team that feels like a family.
The biggest struggle for the team last year was losing on the road with a record of 1-4-2. Some of this can be attributed to the toughness of a four-game Southern California road trip the team endured from Oct. 19-26. This year, only two games at a time on the mainland make the trips better for the team. However, the team will need to find the missing piece from last year’s road games, which seemed to be struggling to score, with them being outscored 14-3. Richardson has put an emphasis on how important it is that the team demands the best and that they push each other.
“They can push each other a lot more than I’ve seen in a while,” Richardson said. “They have really hard demands upon each other without taking it personally, and I think that’s going to serve them really well as we go into the season.”
Chaminade will search for its first win of the season against Hilo at 12 p.m. Saturday. The Silverswords will kick off conference play on Sept. 25 in Fresno, California, to play Fresno Pacific University