Bowling Green State University Athletics
Falcons Begin 2006 Preseason
August 09, 2006 | Women's Soccer
Aug. 9, 2006
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - The Bowling Green State University women's soccer team is preparing for the 2006 season, the 10th campaign in program history. Members of the Falcon squad report today (Wednesday, Aug. 9), with several meetings scheduled for the first day, a fitness test slated for Thursday morning (Aug. 10) and the first practice of camp on Thursday afternoon.
Head coach Andy Richards begins his seventh season at the helm of the Falcons, and welcomes back a total of 10 letterwinners, including four starters, from last year's team. The 2005 BGSU squad finished 14-7-2 overall, winning the Mid-American Conference regular-season title for the first time in school history.
BGSU hosted the MAC Tournament, and captured a second-straight league tourney crown to advance to the NCAA Championships for the second consecutive November.
That '05 team, however, included a total of nine seniors, who departed BGSU after helping the Falcons to 44 wins, the most over a four-year span in school history.
This season, Richards and first-year assistant coach Erik Burstein have just one senior, Lindsay Carter, on the 24-woman roster. There are seven juniors, five sophomores and a whopping 11 freshmen in camp for the Brown and Orange.
The Falcons will play one exhibition match, heading to Dayton on Friday, Aug. 18, for a scrimmage under the lights. The regular season begins one week later, as BGSU travels to Milwaukee to play a pair of 2005 NCAA tourney participants in Marquette and UW-Milwaukee.
The Falcons begin the home portion of the schedule on Labor Day weekend. BG will face Xavier on Friday, Sept. 1, in the first of 11 matches at Cochrane Field. The XU contest begins a three-match homestand which also includes matchups with Western Illinois (Sept. 3) and Youngstown State (Sept. 8).
The non-conference schedule also includes a home game vs. Michigan State (Sept. 15) -- a rematch of last year's NCAA Championships first-round contest -- and road trips to Eastern Illinois (Sept. 10) and Wright State (Sept. 17).
BGSU begins MAC play with a four-match homestand, starting with a Sept. 22 game vs. Northern Illinois. After playing just four of 11 MAC matches at home last year, the Falcons have seven home conference contests in 2006.
The regular season concludes on Thursday, Oct. 26, with a home match vs. Toledo. The MAC Tournament begins three days later (Sunday, Aug. 29) with quarterfinal matches at campus sites. The four survivors will converge on the site of the highest-remaining seed for the semifinals on Friday, Nov. 3.
The semifinal winners will remain in town for Sunday's (Nov. 5) championship. Last year, in a regionally-televised game at Cochrane, the Falcons battled Kent State through 110 scoreless minutes, before BG advanced to the NCAA Championships via penalty kicks.
The Falcons' 2006 schedule can be found by clicking here.
