STARKVILLE — Mississippi State soccer players began celebrating on the pitch after another victory on Sunday, a dominant 4-0 shutout performance against Presbyterian.
The win wrapped up nonconference play for the Bulldogs, who finished it unbeaten, a 6-0-2 record overall and a 4-0-1 record at home.
It took MSU just eight matches this season to eclipse last season’s win total. It took until the 16th and final match in 2021 to win five.
This sudden change of form has definitely caught the women’s college soccer landscape by storm, but when looking at the final box score of the game and statistics for this season, it’s clear what’s propelled MSU to a new level in 2022.
“When you’ve got the experience that we have on the team, it makes it even more difficult for a young player to come in and make an impact,” head coach James Armstrong said. “A number of the younger players are not intimidated by the older players. I’m proud of how they’ve come in and applied themselves.”
Sunday’s match saw four different goal scorers, two of whom were underclassmen. On the season, MSU has scored 14 goals, one off of their entire total from 2021; of those 14, 12 have come from either freshmen or sophomores.
All three players who have scored multiple goals this season for Mississippi State are underclassmen, two of which are freshmen, Maggie Wadsworth and Alivia Buxton.
Wadsworth and Buxton have each already received SEC freshman of the week honors in the five weeks or so that the SEC has given out the distinction, meaning the Bulldogs, as a whole, have accounted for 40 percent of SEC freshman of the week recipients this season.
Coming in, this freshman class really only communicated with each other over social media or over text and group chats.
It wasn’t until the summer that everyone really started getting to know each other in person through training and in preseason workouts that relationships from there continued to blossom and grow.
“It makes it 10 times easier to understand the people that you’re playing with and you know them on a personal level,” Wadsworth said. “I think that how close we were in the beginning really allowed us to portray that side of us on the field.”
Oftentimes, teams that don’t really show as much emotion on the field don’t have the strongest bonds off the field, and with this MSU team, it really seems like — starting with the underclassmen — the Bulldogs have grown into the program and brought their personalities in with it.
That’s rubbed off immensely on the field as the younger players feel comfortable and have almost immediately been able to contribute in big ways.
“It’s been a confidence booster, motivation booster,” Wadsworth said. “Especially coming in as a freshman, it’s a little bit hard at first and very intimidating, but being able to contribute as much as I have so far has been a really cool experience.”
Confidence can often be contagious, going from player to player until it’s positively affected the entire team.
It seems much of that this season has come from conquering one of the tougher nonconference schedules that MSU has put together in quite some time.
That confidence has grown to the coaching staff and has given Armstrong more opportunities to give more players opportunities to consistently contribute. There have been eight different goal-scorers this season, and that’s no coincidence for this team.
“I think the mood in the locker room has been fantastic,” Armstrong said. “There’s a little bit more togetherness, a little bit more of a clearer vision as to what we want to achieve. The comradery amongst the girls is great, and I think that’s shown on the field.”
MSU now marches on into SEC play, taking on Arkansas at home in its first conference match on Friday night.
The Razorbacks have been the class of the conference in recent years, but this Bulldogs team isn’t the same team of years past. The Dawgs are barking and they’re hungry for more, to take that next step for the future.
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