This week, I sat down with Lucielle Kozlov ’16 and Jackie Friedman ’16 of the women’s soccer team to discuss the season’s end and what lies ahead for the team during the offseason.
How has the season been going?
LK: We’ve dealt with a lot of adversity. It was such a change losing two right away from the year before. It was kind of unexpected. After that, we had the mentality that it is only up from there. I thought we improved in so many ways over the course of the season.
JF: It was a big change because we completely switched our formation this year to playing with a sweeper. It was kind of a shock among everybody. It’s usually seen in college soccer that you don’t play that way. After that point though, we’ve been a lot better so I guess it was what we needed to do and it worked out for the best.
Have you guys done any fun team activities outside of playing?
LK: We went to our coach’s house for dinner the night before we played Princeton and had a pumpkin carving contest. We also had a pump up video that our assistant coach made for that night. Last year when we played Princeton, we lost and they ended up winning the Ivy title. We were 6-1 in the Ivy last year and they went undefeated.
JF: Beating Princeton was definitely a highlight of the season.
The team has had a lot of injuries this year. How have you guys had to handle that?
JF: We actually engaged in a program on Sunday that tests out how stable all of our knees and joints are because we’ve had so many injuries. That is going to give Bob [our Strength and Conditioning trainer] a more direct strengthening approach to help prevent that kind of stuff. This year was unheard of, with four torn menisci.
Why did you guys decide to come to Dartmouth?
LK: It’s such a great school academically and athletically so right there it’s top of the food chain and it’s an Ivy League. I actually committed before I visited the school. I had talked to the coach on the phone and in person and she sold me on it. I actually committed on Christmas so it was kind of a Christmas present.
JF: I was very meticulous about the commitment process. It was between Columbia and here. I was going to use soccer to go to the best place I can. I came here, met the girls, went out, felt a lot better about Dartmouth than I did about Columbia. The people were so much more laid back.
How about being from San Diego, Jackie? Was the weather kind of a shock to you?
JF: Yeah, I mean the biggest thing I realized was it’s all about being prepared for it. Everyone in California is like, “How do you do it?” but you buy a big jacket, you put on another jacket under it and then go outside and everything else is the same. I like the winter activities though, like snow shoeing and sledding. And we play IM hockey.
So does everyone on the team who is on campus play IM hockey in the winter?
JF: Yeah, whoever is on campus, and then we use our seniors who are
technically not on the team anymore. We need Marina, she’s really good at hockey. That’s just another thing that is really fun for us to get to do. During season, we would never get to think about doing something like that.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
