Sports Spotlight: Women’s soccer strides ahead
Women’s soccer 2026-27 season is starting off with a lead, as the Willamette Women’s Soccer team is coming into their conference with a record of 6 wins, 7 losses, and 1 tie. Compared to their last season, when the team had a final standing of 3-7-9, the team has a shining future towards the last weeks of games.
Forward Haleigh Seeling (’30) spoke on the team’s overall performance, and she highlights their ups and downs. “There have been some games where we definitely could have been a little better, but we take those and reflect off of [it] and move on from that,” she said. “I think every game is a new learning opportunity that we use to move on to the next.”
Midfielder and forward Natalie Rodriguez-De La Torre (’27) has seen the development of the team compared to the previous season, especially with the influx of returning players. “We had a lot of new girls last year, and so that helped a lot of girls develop for this year,” Rodriguez-De La Torre said. “It allowed our team to have really close connections, which I think has helped us benefit from it because we all know each other so well now.”
The bonds created on the team in the previous year carried over into this season, strengthening the connection between returning members, and creating a community that includes the incoming players.
Rodriguez-De La Torre recounted how the strengthened bond of the team has positively impacted their playing ability, “We've been focusing on relying on each other and counting on one another to push each other to our best, and knowing that if people are having hard times, we can always easily rely on someone else to help us out and push us to be our best version.”
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