The Lady Bisons soccer team just completed a record-breaking regular season, and look to take the season even further this weekend.
The team finished regular season play Friday Oct. 24 against Northern Kentucky. The game ended in a 2-0 loss, but the team finished with a 10-6-2 overall record, and the no. 2 spot going into the conference tournament.
This 2014 season is the first season the Lipscomb women’s team has had a winning record. The Lady Bisons have also only made it into the tournament one other year, and that was last year. A change in coaching staff back in the spring of 2012 is a huge part of the program’s turnaround.
Junior Emily Shuler was recruited to Lipscomb before the coaching change, and said she would have looked elsewhere had she been aware of the programs record, but she is thrilled with the change.
“When I looked at Lipscomb’s website for them to come watch [me play], I remember their record was like, two wins, maybe. I was like, what am I doing, like why did I ask them to come, and it ended up being awesome,” Shuler said. “Now we’re at a place where we’ve got five times that for wins if not more.”
Senior Karli Crosby played on the team before head coach Kevin O’Brien was hired, and she has seen first hand how much of a difference he has made.
“We’ve gotten better every single year ever since OB (O’Brien) got here. He came in the spring of my freshman year. The fall before he got here we finished tenth in the conference and won one game, in conference play,” Crosby said. “My sophomore year we finished eighth, last year we finished sixth, and this year we finished second.”
Crosby went on to say how thankful she is for having O’Brien as a coach and emphasized the hard work it has taken for the team to get to where they are.
“It’s something that, coaches talk about transforming a program all the time, but we owe a huge credit to OB and ourselves for putting in the work to do that,” Crosby said.
O’Brien emphasized that the credit for the program turnaround has to be credited to the players and not just the coaching staff. As the team heads into the conference tournament, O’Brien said he is pleased with where the team is at.
“You know we haven’t changed what we’ve been doing. It’s a matter of, in time you get better at what you do, and there’s a greater cohesion and understanding,” O’Brien said. “You’re playing with players that now you’ve played 17 games, 18 games next to, and there’s just a really good continuity and understanding.”
The Lady Bisons are the no. 2 seed in the tournament, so they got a bye through the first round of the conference tournament. They open conference play Friday Nov. 7 in Fort Myers, Fl against the no.6 seed Kennesaw State. The team is just two wins away from a conference championship.
The best way to keep up with the team’s progress is on lipscombsports.com or atlanticsun.org.
Photo courtesy of lipscombsports.com.
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