Mary Harrison, Campus Carrier sports editor

With 21 seconds left on the game clock and the Berry men’s soccer team leading 1-0, Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) pushes past to score a goal, tying the Vikings. Berry then falls to BSC in a penalty kick shootout, losing their only chance to advance to the national tournament in 10 years.

“Instead of going to the national tournament, we went home,” Head Coach Richard Vardy said. “It was even more frustrating because we’ve won the conference a couple of times but haven’t had the opportunity to go to the national tournament.”

The men’s and women’s soccer teams both faced unprecedented highlights and heartbreaks last year. This fall, while facing different struggles, they share rosters with returning players and aspirations to finish at the top of strong conference competition in 2023.

Even after losing to BSC in the Southern Athletic Association (SAA), the men finished with nine wins, two losses and six ties, a record tying for the fewest losses since Berry joined the NCAA’s Division III as full members in 2013 and setting a record for most ties in a season.

BSC and Berry entered the conference championship as sixth and fourth seed, respectively. This speaks to how competitive the SAA is becoming, Vardy said. He also said that seven of the conference’s eight teams have high aspirations this year.

“Our goal is always to improve, improve, improve and be at peak in tournament time,” Vardy said.

The Vikings men’s soccer team has won the SAA three times, but only advanced to the national tournament in 2014, due to the pandemic in 2020 and still having athletes on scholarship in 2012.

Vardy believes that with 22 of his 27 players being returners and lots of pre-season experience for newer players, the Vikings will play a good season and could finally snag their fourth conference championship and second national tournament appearance.

Unfortunately, more experienced players are facing injuries this pre-season than in 2022, which is the reason why younger players gained more experience during scrimmages. According to Vardy, about 8 players, or 1/3 of their starting lineup, are facing either a short- or long-term injury. Vardy expects this to make their schedule more challenging.

“Some of those early season games might be a little bit trickier than there would have been just because we won’t be healthy and have a full roster available,” Vardy said.

TJ Tracy, co-captain for the men’s team along with fellow seniors Tracy Moon and Jose Palacios, said that the injuries also leave little room for penalties on the field that could lead to expulsion from the game.

“We’re just gonna need some guys to come ball while [others] are hurting,” Tracy said. “We’ve got to show up and ball every day as best as we can.”

Tracy stressed the need to view the opposing team with a positive attitude rather than as the enemy, but also for the Vikings to take themselves seriously.

“I think a big change for us is to understand that we’re a really good program and we’ve got a lot of good players and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to go win the championship,” Tracy said.

The men begin their season with a road trip to Virginia this weekend, where they face non-conference opponents, Christopher Newport University on Sept. 1 and Virginia Wesleyan University on Sept. 3. Overall, Vardy said the team enjoys a good balance of home and away games this year.

The women’s soccer team, on the other hand, is facing a busy travel schedule, playing back-to-back away games in September. Head Coach Kathy Brown said the women will face their two toughest non-conference opponents of the season, Emory University and Washington & Lee University, on the road at the beginning of the season.

Brown is keeping in mind, though, that conference play will ultimately help her ladies win the women’s soccer program its first SAA championship title. The Vikings have not won the conference since joining the SAA, and the team has not won the regular season title since Brown became head coach four years ago.

“In the conference, every game matters, whether they’re ranked top or bottom, and it’s a challenge to win every one of them,” Brown said.

The Vikings lost the regular season championship last fall because of not being able to score on Oglethorpe University, a conference opponent they expected to beat. At the same time, the Vikings beat a historically premiere Centre College program in a regular season game, the first time that school had lost a conference game since 2014. Centre later knocked the Vikings out of the post-season tournament.

Hard fought wins by both the Vikings and their opponents serve as evidence that all competition levels are also rising among the conference’s women’s teams, according to Brown.

“We had both a very, very big high and a very, very low, low last year, and you can learn a lot from both of them,” Brown said. “That’s why we do what we do.”

While the men are struggling with injuries, Brown said the women’s team faced very few injuries in the pre-season, and her players came in relatively fit. Players instead had to focus on learning a new formation during pre-season.

Both Brown and co-captain Hannah Henn, a junior, believe the new gameplay method fits well and comes more naturally with the team’s athleticism, as exhibited during their scrimmages this pre-season.

“We’re all gonna have more moments,” Henn said. “I don’t feel like it’s gonna be just the same people scoring or making big plays. Everybody will have a chance, which is exciting because last year, I don’t feel like we had the impact.”

This immediate field impact of each player is also helped by the depth achieved by this roster of 30 players strong, with 23 returners, each one recruited by Brown specifically for that position. Players will not have to dig as deep as in previous years for the team to have the same impact on the                                      field, Brown said.

While beating Centre made 2022 a storybook season, Brown said that the team was young then and that she already sees more maturity and leadership this year, especially in her 13 sophomores.

Brown also said that after undergoing a rough post-season this spring with the departure of senior team captains, Henn and fellow junior co-captains Molly Hellwig and Savannah Courtney are forming stable leadership and bonding the team.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth,” Brown said.” Maybe that’s why I’m so excited. I feel like it’s coming back together.”

The women kick off their season at home this Friday at 5 p.m. against Brevard College.