The Canisius College women's soccer team announced its 2015 schedule on Wednesday and features a 20-game slate including two exhibition contests and 18 regular season games.
“I am excited to get my first season going here at Canisius,” said head coach Todd Clark. “Our schedule features a mixture of teams I am very familiar with from my time in Ohio and more recently in North Carolina, however many of the MAAC schools will be new to challenge to me and I look forward to it.”
The Griffs open the 2015 slate with a pair of exhibition contests against Monroe Community College on Aug. 9 at the Demske Sports Complex and a road game against Kent State on Aug. 15.
“The preseason is for preparation entirely and I know we face two strong opponents I am familiar with in MCC and Kent State,” Clark said. “MCC is a local opponent that is consistently nationally competitive and well coached, while Kent State is a quality Mid-American Conference opponent with another excellent coach. They are always well organized and will be a good challenge to see how the preseason is progressing and how our team is shaping up. “
The Griffs' regular season starts on the road against Old Dominion on Aug. 23. The Blue and Gold will open the home portion of the 2015 schedule Aug. 25, when the team hosts local-rival St. Bonaventure.
Canisius then alternates home and road contests for the next four games, heading to Binghamton on Aug. 28 and Sacred Heart on Sept. 4, while battling Buffalo (Aug. 30) and NJIT (Sept. 6) at the Demske Sports Complex.
Following the game against the Highlanders, the Blue and Gold set off on a four-game road trip, including non-conference games at Cleveland State (Sept.11) and Robert Morris (Sept. 13). The Griffs will play their first two MAAC games of the season on the road when the team takes on Manhattan (Sept. 19) and Monmouth (Sept. 26). Monmouth, the two-time defending MAAC regular-season champion, is 17-1-2 in MAAC regular season games over the last two seasons, with that one loss coming to Canisius in Buffalo last year.
“The MAAC, like any other conference schedule, is to be taken game by game,” Clark said. “From the teams I know and the film I have watched from 2014, it is clear the MAAC is a wide open race, and to win the conference a team needs to be deadly consistent. Pretty soccer is not the goal - winning is. We want to play an attractive brand of soccer but we need to do whatever is necessary to win matches and we will need to do so each and every game if we want to have a say in the MAAC race.”
Canisius wraps up the month of September with its first MAAC home contest against the Marist Red Foxes on Sept. 30. Fairfield continues the abbreviated homestand with a game at the Demske Sports Complex on Oct. 3.
The Griffs play three of the next four games on the road, playing at Siena (Oct. 7) Iona (Oct. 10) and Niagara (Oct. 21) with the lone home contest against Quinnipiac sandwiched-in on Oct. 17.
The Blue and Gold's yearly rivalry game against Niagara takes place on Oct. 21 before wrapping up the regular season with home games against Saint Peter's on Oct. 24 and Rider on Oct. 28.
The 2105 MAAC Women's Soccer Championship will start on Saturday, Oct. 31, when the No. 3 and No 4 seeded teams from the regular season play host to first-round games on campus. The No. 3 seed will host the No. 6 seed in the tournament, while the No. 4 seed will play host to the fifth-seeded team. The winners of the first round games will advance to the MAAC Women's Soccer Championship semifinal round, which will be hosted on-campus of the MAAC regular-season champion Friday, Nov. 6. The MAAC Women's Soccer Championship game will be played Nov. 8, with the winning team earning the league's automatic berth into the NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Championship tournament.
“It's a good schedule and we have our work cut out for us to be successful,” Clark said. “We have the right to have high-expectations but we will temper that with the reality that everyone is undefeated right now. Each coach is working hard to plan, players across the nation are running and lifting and playing to be ready and we will all know a lot more in a month. I'm looking forward to starting and getting on the field with this group and working towards Aug. 9 and rolling the ball out with MCC and going from there.”
Clark was named the fifth head coach in program history on Dec. 19, 2014. He takes over a program that went 6-14-0 overall and 5-5-0 in MAAC play last year. Canisius qualified for the 2014 MAAC Women's Soccer Championship as the sixth-seed and saw its season come to an end with a 1-0 loss to Niagara in the first round of the MAAC championship event.
