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Chicago
women’s soccer team kicks across Italy
 Fresh
from play overseas and fueled by increased fan interest, the team
aims to win a national title.
The U of C women’s soccer team began its quest for the NCAA
Division III championship in August with a trip to Italy for ten
days of preseason play—and a little sightseeing. Head coach
Amy Reifert led 23 of the team’s 25 members to Rome, Florence,
Venice, and Cuomo, where they played professional Italian teams
and visited the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and the Alps.
The women’s team usually spends its month-long preseason at
Stagg Field, practicing four-and-a-half hours daily. But this year
Reifert wanted to establish a “solid base for the year”
by emphasizing teammate unity. “We went to Italy as much for
the experience as for the soccer,” she explains. “This
team is a very close unit, which is so important when it comes to
team play.”
Midfielder Cinnamon Pace, a fourth-year biology concentrator, also
hoped the trip would foster camaraderie. “Traveling abroad
as a team is something only we are doing out of all the Chicago
teams this season,” she said a week before departing for Italy.
“You always get great stories and a lot of bonding when you
do things like this.”
With two overseas losses, including one to a team boasting three
World Cup players, and a win against another Italian team, Chicago
came back well prepared for a 4-0 home victory against Lawrence
College in its regular season opener on September 7. While Chicago
still has much to prove in its push for a championship, it also
has much to defend: Last year the Maroons, ranked 25th in the nation,
beat rival Wheaton College and defending national champion Macalaster
College. Fourth-year captains Jessica Berry, Kate Cortis, and Amy
Gleisner, along with Pace, are expected to be heavily relied on
this season.
When Reifert arrived at Chicago in 1991, the women’s soccer
team had only a part-time coach and a losing record. “Winning
a game in itself was a huge deal,” Reifert recalls. “There
was no big lure of a national championship ring waiting for us.
That just didn’t exist.” She rebuilt the program from
scratch, identifying players she felt could change its direction.
“We now have top-notch kids from all over the country,”
she says, including “several kids who could have played Division
I, but who chose to come to Chicago to get the education and play
for a place where they legitimately had the chance to win the national
championship.”
In 1996 the women’s soccer team catapulted onto the national
scene with its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance, reaching the
Final Four before falling to the College of New Jersey. Since then—what
Reifert calls the team’s “breakthrough year”—the
women have returned to the tournament twice. Several Maroons have
also garnered All-University Athletic Association and All-Central
Regional honors, and Pace received the nation’s highest All-American
honors last season.
Reifert has high hopes for the team’s future, whose upswing
coincides with the recent success of the national women’s soccer
team in the World Cup tournament. “There’s so much more
of a heightened awareness of the game that it can only be great
for soccer,” she says. “I hope it brings us even more
fans this season.”—B.B.
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