LEWISTON, Maine -- The Bates women's soccer team ended the 2021 season with a flourish, defeating rival Colby 4-1. It was the most goals in a NESCAC game for Bates since 2015 and the program's largest margin of victory in a NESCAC game since 2005. But the four goals scored by Bates in that impressive victory matched their total number of goals in the other nine NESCAC matches combined last year. Finding more consistency on offense will be key to the team's success this season, which begins Tuesday at 5pm on the road against Maine Maritime Academy. 

"The bulk of our players have been through a NESCAC season, which is the opposite of what it was last year," fourth-year head coach Joe Vari said. "We're really happy with the momentum we have coming into the fall. The hardest part of being in this conference is scoring goals, so hopefully, we can be a little bit more potent offensively, and I think we'll still be good and organized defensively." 

After graduating just four players from last year's squad, Vari is excited about this season's group of seven seniors, who have grown in the program with him since his first year at the helm. 

Four of the seven seniors were voted captains by their teammates. Senior captain Elizabeth Patrick (Ipswich, Mass.) is the headliner, having scored four goals and dished out two assists last year for a team-leading 10 points. Two of her goals were game-winners and she was accurate as well, with 50 percent of Patrick's team-leading 38 shots ending up on goal. Fellow senior captains Cece Pilgrim (North Kingstown, R.I.) and Courtney Gray (Belmont, Mass.) provide more firepower, as Pilgrim scored two goals and tallied a pair of assists, while Gray netted two goals and dished out one assist last season. Senior captain Joanna Cloutier (Portland, Ore.) anchors the Bates defense but also contributes offensively, having dished out a pair of assists in 2021. 

In addition to the four captains, senior forward Addy Armah (Accra, Ghana) should be an impact player on offense, and senior Sophie Martens (Scarborough, Maine) joins Cloutier on the defensive side of the field. 

"You can go up and down the list, all of our seniors are tremendous leaders," Vari said. "We return a really good nucleus, a fair amount of players that were starters for us or were coming off the bench. So we're a lot more experienced than I think we look on paper." 

One of the places where Bates is deceptively experienced is between the pipes, as senior goalkeeper Chase Crawford (Indianapolis, Ind.) leads a trio of Bobcats competing for the starting goalkeeper role. Crawford only saw action in two matches last year, backing up then fifth-year senior Kat Nuckols '22. But Crawford played in seven matches, starting four as a first-year in 2019. Meanwhile, sophomore Ruby Reimann (Oak Bluffs, Mass.) saw action in three matches, starting one last year. First-year Samantha Bunar (Lynnfield, Mass.) joins the goalkeeper group this season, providing more depth. 

"We're going to have a good player in that space, whoever it is, between those three," Vari said. "It's a wide open competition at this point."

Junior captain Charlotte Jones (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.) leads the class of 2024, a group that is coming off their first season of collegiate soccer. Jones started all 15 matches last year as a rookie and scored a goal against Amherst. Junior forward Izzy Lussier (West Suffield, Conn.) made an immediate impact, scoring the game-winning goal at Trinity and tallying one of the Bobcats' four goals against Colby. Junior midfielder Maeve Parmelee (Pelham, N.Y.) assisted on Lussier's game-winning goal, and Parmelee tallied a goal of her own in NESCAC action against Hamilton. Junior Haley Fenlon (West Boylston, Mass.) helped Bates record four shutouts while starting 13 matches on defense a year ago.

With 13 combined seniors and juniors, the player returning to the Bobcats who actually played the most minutes last year is now-sophomore Ellie Tyska (Natick, Mass.), who started all 15 matches as a midfielder while playing 1,307 minutes. Fellow sophomore Lily Houser (Worthington, Ohio) didn't play nearly as many minutes as Tyska but made her presence felt as a rookie with a pair of goals against Thomas College. The Bobcats feature 11 sophomores and six first-years. 

"The goal this year is to play deep into November," Vari said. "Programmatically, we're really excited where we are and we feel like we have a good, bright future."