Even though postseason is no longer a possibility, Iowa soccer will not go quietly.
By Courtney Baumann
The end is nigh for the Iowa soccer team.
The Hawkeyes have only two games left in their season — both at home, both unimportant from an outsider’s point of view, given that the postseason is out of the question.
The team does not see it that way.
Although the Hawkeyes are no longer eligible for the Big Ten Tournament, they still believe that there is still something worth fighting for in the remainder of the season.
“I want them to make a choice to come back and find some new goals and adjust them,” head coach Dave DiIanni said. “We’re not going to get into the Big Ten Tournament, so the rest of the year has to be devoted to the four seniors.”
Those four are Hannah Clark, Brooke Backes, Sarah Mazur, and Mackenzie Guindon.
Those adjusted goals will be put to the test this evening, when the team takes on Nebraska.
Tonight’s theme is another reason for Iowa to work even harder for the four who will soon leave the program. The game against the Huskers is Iowa’s Senior Night.
“Not to make it a selfish thing, but the whole time now, we’ve been saying, ‘Do it for the seniors,’ ” Mazur said. “I think everyone is going to be pretty pumped up and will do it for us.”
Yet another thing to be tacked onto Iowa’s “reasons to win” list is that the team has never beaten Nebraska.
Since the seniors were unable to carry the team to the tournament, they want to find another way to “leave their mark” on the team, and a win over Nebraska would be a start, they said.
“Beating Nebraska is kind of our next goal,” Clark said. “Something we can leave and say our class did.”
The seniors deal with the approaching end in different ways.
Guidon tore her ACL a couple of months ago, making her unable to play in her last season. Backes and Mazur do not have any plans to play at the next level, so they plan to play every second they can as hard as they can, knowing it is their last couple of competitive matches. Clark, on the other hand, could very well go professional, but that does not mean she does not have a sense of urgency.
Mazur and Backes know that their eyes will not be dry.
For Backes, having her parents there and introduced with her is a large part of that. Mazur said the feeling of a Friday night game will affect her the most.
“Friday nights under the lights are the games that we live for,” she said. “They’re really exciting, and there’s a lot of emotion. Having it be Senior Day puts even more emotion into that.
“We just want to win.”