Northern Michigan University’s Hannah Kastamo, center, gets a jump on Cedarvlle's Savannah McConnell, left, and Evania McCandless to get to the ball first during their college women’s soccer game played at the NMU Soccer Field in Marquette on Saturday. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

MARQUETTE — The women’s soccer team at Northern Michigan University takes its first trip away from home when it starts the conference campaign this weekend.

The Wildcats, with a rather unusual-looking 0-1-3 record, play at Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference member Roosevelt at 2 p.m. EDT today in Chicago, then head back up the Lake Michigan shore to take on Wisconsin-Parkside at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday.

Fans can follow @NMU_wsoccer on Instagram and @NMU_wsoccer on X (formerly Twitter) for updates leading up to and during the games.

NMU’s record was produced at its home NMU Soccer Field over the past two weeks with a total of just three goals scored by the home and visiting teams combined.

Northern opened the regular season — it took part in three exhibitions in late August — with a 1-1 tie vs. St. Cloud State, then played scoreless draws against both Minnesota-Duluth and Cedarville, with a 1-0 loss to Northwood between the 0-0 games.

Today’s game comes against a Lakers team that has gotten off to a 2-1 start as no GLIAC team has played a league game yet. Interestingly, a majority of the league — five of the nine teams including NMU — has not won a single game, though the winless teams each have at least one tie except Michigan Tech, which is 0-4.

Roosevelt last week defeated Upper Iowa 5-1 and Thomas More 3-2, with the Lakers’ Bella Perry earning GLIAC Offensive Player of the Week for her first two collegiate goals, including a game-winner.

In contrast to NMU’s one goal scored so far, Roosevelt has 10 — and these Lakers only had eight goals in all of 2024. Not surprisingly, Roosevelt is eighth in NCAA Division II in assists per game, 12th in points per game and 14th in scoring offense.

However, Roosevelt is last in the Midwest Region in saves percentage and second worst in goals against average as one of two league teams without a shutout.

Parkside is part of the winless pack at 0-3-1 and is the other league team without a shutout.

The Rangers lost 2-1 to Winona State, tied 2-2 vs. Lewis, then were skunked in a 5-0 setback to St. Cloud and 4-0 to Concordia-St. Paul. They’re led by Carley Notle with two goals.

“We’re coming off a good performance, but stepping into conference, it’s a new season now,” Northern head coach Erin Egolf said in an NMU Sports Information news release previewing this weekend. “We’re here to take care of business in our conference games, regardless of what happened in our nonconference games, and we’ve got to take those next steps.

“If we play well, good things will happen.”

Last week’s results weren’t so terrible for the Wildcats, considering that Northwood and Cedarville are both regionally ranked.

In the Northwood loss on Sept. 11, NMU netminder Jillian Thompson had two saves, while Hannah Kastamo had a shot on goal as she played all 90 minutes.

“It was a growth weekend (for our team),” Egolf said. “I think (on Sept. 11) we underperformed. We played a good team in Northwood, but the game was there for the taking, and we didn’t take advantage of it.”

The scoreless draw vs. Cedarville on Saturday was bit of bad luck for the Wildcats, who hit the post with a shot early on and generated a number of quality scoring chances, taking seven of the game’s eight corner kicks. Thompson finished this game with five saves for her shutout as Kastamo had another two shots on goal.

“We had a lot of conversation after the game on Thursday, then we came out on Saturday and played the best game we’ve played all year against Cedarville, (which) is probably the best team we’ve played so far, and I thought we were the better team on the day,” Egolf said.

Story contents based on Northern Michigan University Sports Information press release previewing the games. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.