By Jackson Keenan, Staff
The Cru starts their season with high hopes, but there are many questions remaining as their season begins.
After coming off a 2023 campaign in which the Crusaders under Head Coach Barry Elkins went 16-1-2, winning the regular season American Southwest Conference championship and making it to the NCAA tournament, coming up short in the first round to Emory.
This season, the Crusaders are looking to get back to the tournament and make it past the first round, especially after coming up short in the past two years.
"We want to get to the national tournament. We've kind of taken steps forward, but there's always a hump to get over. I think first, it was getting that conference championship, which we did, and that was nice. So, our goal this year is to get out of the first round. So, we'd like to make the sweet 16," Elkins said.
The Crusaders have started on a positive note, being selected first in the ASC preseason poll. Which, according to Coach Elkins, helps get their name out to the nation.
"Getting recognition in what is considered the coaches poll, the popular poll, whatever you want to call it, still gets our name out there to win; yes, you have to win your conference tournament, but still allowing teams in the nation to understand who we are, which is really difficult," Elkins said.
Along with gaining first place in the ASC poll, the Crusaders also had three players named on the preseason watch list. These include graduate student Kesley White, senior defender Kennedy Harris, and junior defender Malyn Martinson. According to Elkins, this gives the defense an established identity.
"We have a very established philosophy on our team defense. So, replacing a defender is a little bit easier in that everybody kind of has their defensive role defined for them," Elkins said
Although the defense has an established philosophy, the same cannot be said about the offense.
After losing their two lead scorers, Mackenzie Worthy and Ashley Vensel, the Crusaders will need to figure out who will do most of the goal-scoring.
"So, the two individuals that scored the most goals for us last year graduated and moved on. So, that has been our challenge of who will score goals; we moved our starting left wing up to forward. We're hoping she can produce. It's Jamie Dowell. And then we took Kelsey White, who was our returning all-American. We gave her a little bit more of an offensive role than she had last year because we think she's able to handle it," Elkins said.
Even though the Crusaders lost many seniors, Elkins hopes the preseason games will help prepare the team for the regular season.
"I think players were going to be able to show their stuff going into our third scrimmage, which is more about upping our speed of play going into our first game. So, we played a top-five team in the nation, Division II Dallas Baptist University, a very good soccer team. So, you saw us grow in our speed of play as the game went on. They got more comfortable with the faster game, so then hopefully that carries us into Friday, and we're just playing at a much faster pace of soccer," Elkins said
With the team ready to play, the Crusaders will start their season tonight at 7 against Southwestern. In which the Cru looks to play an exciting brand of soccer and kick off their season with a victory.
"We talk about a lot, like trying to have an exciting brand of soccer so that people can enjoy it and get into the game. So hopefully, you know, they show up and it's exciting for them. They enjoy the product; I think we do at least try to focus on putting something out there that people would enjoy watching," Elkins said.
