Terrier Tribune: Shannon Keefe Chapter 3 – “Patriot League play begins”

Dear BU soccer fans,

The soccer season is a long one, starting in August and potentially going into December. Our team breaks it up into three different “mini-seasons”: Preseason, Conference Games, and the Postseason. We set different goals for each season and work to achieve them as a team one step at a time.

We closed out “Season 1” at West Virginia, a team that has consistently been in the nation’s top-25 for the past few years. In 2016, West Virginia lost 3-1 in the College Cup Final to University of Southern California. A team like West Virginia has a high speed of play and is very good at getting numbers into their attack.

Individually, they were athletic specimens and fantastic soccer players. However, while the result was not as favorable as we would’ve liked (a 4-0 loss), we held our own against a very good team. With the most important part of the whole season right around the corner, we established that one of our goals would be to imprint our quick style of play on every team we faced. We then headed from Morgantown, West Virginia to Washington, D.C.

It is officially Patriot League play. On Sept. 16, we kicked off our conference schedule at American University. After a 110-minute battle, we ended in a draw with the Eagles with another phenomenal goal from sophomore Anna Heilferty.

Week two was our Patriot League home opener against Lehigh. We had a week between our game against American and the game against Lehigh—the longest time between games thus far in the season. We definitely needed a little bit of a break, especially since Patriot League play is what we work for all year.

All the practices, lifts and hard out-of-conference games, is the work we put in to succeed in our conference. Opening with a tie was not how we wanted to start out, and we were determined to make up for it against Lehigh.

This particular game was very special to me because Lehigh is my younger sister’s team. Ever since she committed to play soccer at a rival Patriot League school, we had talked about the first time we would play each other. It was definitely a little bizarre playing on opposing teams. In high school, we worked so well together, both on defense and in attack. She has always been my biggest fan, so it was weird to have to go up against.

We won 1-0 off a header goal from Chelsea Churchill in the 8th minute of the game, and what a goal it was! My favorite part about when our team scores a goal is how excited the bench gets. The rest of the game was back and forth, but ultimately ended in our favor; which means I get bragging rights over my sister for the next year!

We are currently on our way home from Worcester, Massachusetts after our third Patriot League contest against Holy Cross. Our 3-0 win now improves our conference record 2-0-1, and sends us back to Boston with the infamous “Turnpike Trophy.” With two of the three goals, Anna was named MVP of the match!

We are back at home this Saturday at 1pm against Lafayette! Hope to see you all there!