Both the men’s and women’s soccer teams at Keene State have entered the second half of their seasons, hoping to crack a league playoff spot.
The men’s team is currently sitting at 1-3-1 in the conference with very little margin for error. Keene State overall, having a 7-4-2 record, started the season off strong and needs to build off those first couple of games to take themselves to the final stretch of the season.
Owls senior Captain Dylan Chambers spoke about the team leading up to the playoffs.
“The season started off really well, we were 6 and 1 at one point, but a lot of those were out of conference games which in the end don’t really matter as much. In the conference we started 0 and 2 and tied UMass Boston and are currently 1-3-1, so the main message right now in the whole locker room is our backs are against the wall and we can’t lose,” said Chambers.
Every game and every moment matters for the rest of this season if the Owls want to crack a playoff spot.
On the other hand, the women’s soccer team has 4 ties in their conference with an overall record of 1-0-4. The team has a great balance of scoring with 7 players having 4 or more points. Junior Captain Bryn Dickinson spoke on what the message around the locker room is leading up to this important stretch.
“Right now it’s just keeping our energy up, we came off of a really high energy weekend, so we just want to keep the energy up and keep going. We’re really confident after this past weekend even though the score didn’t turn out like we wanted it too— we’re really confident in our group,” said Dickinson.
Fifth year Head Coach Sarah Testo also had some words about the team.
“Everyday we try and get a little better, and the girls are doing a really good job with that, I mean we’re playing better, our last game we were beating the three time defending LEC champions with just over three minutes left and a penalty kick was called which was very unfortunate, so yeah thats really our message just try and get better on things that we’re not doing well— just continue to work on them,” said coach Testo.
KSC Director of Athletics Marty Testo spoke on his feelings on the teams and their goals as a school.
“Our goal in our athletic department every year is to be as competitive as possible and that road consists of being competitive through the regular season, putting yourself in a position to qualify for the tournament, and hopefully advancing from there,” said Testo.
This stretch for the Owls is huge and both teams look to keep building a winning culture in order to sneak into this year’s postseason.
Matt Cabral can be contacted at
mcabral@kscequinox.com
