With the start of each Mid-American Conference schedule, there are always questions and unexpected turns during the course of the season. This season is no different as the Bobcats start MAC play Friday at Bowling Green and at Central Michigan on Sunday.
The Ohio women’s soccer team will play one of its several marquee match-ups on its schedule, starting with the Chippewas on Sunday. Ohio senior forward Veronica Rock said despite the big games listed on the schedule, they aren’t getting ahead of themselves, starting with the games against the Chippewas and Falcons.
“We like to take one game at a time,” Rock said. “Obviously Central Michigan is always a big rivalry with us and we have Toledo on the back of our minds from our loss to them at the end of the season; other than that we just want to come out strong, we don’t like putting anybody on a pedestal.”
Ohio coach Stacy Strauss said the first few weekends will be exciting and telling but will ultimately come down to the last game of the season. She said several teams in the MAC played very tough non-conference schedules in preparation for the season, which is a credit to the league and the coaches.
“I think based on a lot of results thus far there’s a lot of very good teams in our conference and I’d say certainly in the region we’ve had three of four teams now getting votes or getting mentioned in regional balloting and things like that,” Strauss said. “I really credit a lot of the coaches around the conference for playing a tough non-conference schedule.”
Ohio senior defender Paige Howard said the uncertainty factor of teams plays a large part in the outcome of the conference.
“There’s a lot of parity in the MAC so obviously every game’s important and it can go either way,” Howard said. “We’re obviously really excited to start MAC play and we worked on a couple things that need to be cleaned up and I think everyone’s real excited to go out there, work hard and hopefully win the MAC.”
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