UWS soccer as a whole has been an absolute powerhouse in the UMAC, and this season is looking to be more of the same.

“For us, staying true to our values, we have a list of five core values that we are committed to, and then it’s chasing our potential,” said women’s head coach Allison DeGroot. “We have 12 seniors this year, so a big group that will be graduating. They have very high expectations for this team and what they want to accomplish this year. It’s chasing our potential and seeing how far we can make it, how good can we get, how competitive can we be.”

Niya Wilson has seen it all in her five years, but for some reason this years squad feels a bit different.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve had in all five years of being here,” said Wilson. “It truly, that’s cliche, but it does feel like something special. So it’s super cool to be a part of and even though it’s only day like six or seven, I think potential is high and I think we’re all super excited to see what we can do.”

What the Yellowjackets can do is heavily dependent on Wilson, putting forth a season where she was a UMAC first team, her third straight season. UWS women’s soccer hits the pitch on August 30th against UW-La Crosse at 7 p.m..

The men’s soccer team is fresh off the heels of their seventh straight UMAC title, a monopoly over the championships in the conference, and were selected Monday to do it an 8th time. The Yellowjackets garnered a UMAC best 48 points, including six-of-eight first place vote.

“It’s a new plan every year. I mean, obviously the conference changes. There’s a lot of new guys in the conference, a lot of new coaches in the conference. So I fully expect there to be a lot of parity this year. I think just about everybody probably gets a bit stronger. The challenges that we’ve seen in the past, I think are going to be different challenges this year. That’s all part of the fun, really,” shared Joe Mooney, the men’s head coach.

Yellowjackets players too, especially upperclassmen, have their sights set on making the streak eight straight titles, because that’s all they know.

“I think in this program the goals are pretty obvious,” said Zach Tiemeyer, a senior defenseman. “Anything short of a conference championship would be a pretty big failure. So just the opportunity to go four for four, I think that’s obviously the goal. Then we can just take it one game at a time after that and go from there.”

“I think it’s just winning as many games as possible, I mean, I feel like there’s games every year where you feel like you could have had them. I feel like if we can just have that mindset that every game should be ours, I think we can have a good season,” said junior forward Jake Kidd.

The Yellowjackets turn to their season opener on August 30th against Augsburg, and they finally return home for some meaningful action on September 6th against Carlton college.