Oregon’s women’s soccer team opened a new facility Sunday with an intrasquad scrimmage one week ahead of its season opener. While the team has been practicing at the new Pape Field all summer, it was the first opportunity to glimpse the new facility in a game environment, and the team liked what it saw.
Senior Scout Libke called new structure an “entirely new environment,” with its synthetic turf field and on-site locker rooms.
“There’s no true comparison between our old locker room and this,” she said. “We have lockers that are not from the 90s, or the 80s are whatever they are. We have couches, not cushions that people’s sweaty bodies have been on for twenty years in a row. It’s unbelievable the things that they put into this, and I guess our way of showing our appreciation will be performing this season. That’s the only way we can really say thank you.”
The Ducks are picked to finish tenth in the Pacific-12 Conference by the league’s coaches, but the consensus on the team is that they’re capable of doing much better than that with last year’s talented freshman class now having a year of collegiate soccer experience under their belts.
“What they think is what they think,” said senior defender Lauren Thompson. “We can always challenge them and show them what we really are, which is better than that.”
In Sunday’s scrimmage, a 3-0 victory for the green squad, all three goals came from the feet of freshmen, an encouraging sign for head coach Tara Erickson. The underclassmen talent, combined with a talented seven-member senior class — more than twice the size of the senior class from a season ago — gives the Ducks much more depth than they’ve had in the past.
“I can honestly say for the first year of my four years here that we have depth to our bench,” Libke. “In games where we’re ahead we can put in fresh legs, or if someone gets hurt we have a number of people on the bench who can fill the same role.”