With women’s soccer season wrapping up two weeks ago, in a 1-0 loss to Washington & Jefferson College on senior day, the Waynesburg University Yellow Jackets finished the season 7-7-2 overall.

In the conference standings, the Jackets final place was sixth, one spot behind their projected finish of fifth in the preseason PAC poll.

Head coach Laura Heethuis said moves were made during the season to build the program.

“Overall, I thought we had a good season,” said Heethuis. “We have continued to improve.”

The Yellow Jackets went 4-2-2 in the non-conference portion of their schedule, including a 4-0 start to get the 2018 season underway. The early win streak ended when they went to New Concord, Ohio and suffered a 2-0 loss at the hands of the Muskingum University Muskies.

Looking back, Heethuis was satisfied with how the team performed out of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.

“We won some more games than we did last year, which was a good thing,” said Heethuis. “We did really well non-conference and we did really well in some of the games in conference play.”

The Jackets went 4-5 in conference play—ending the season with four straight losses. Waynesburg has now missed the PAC playoffs in six straight seasons, with the last appearance coming in 2012.

Despite the team having a chance to make the PAC playoffs with just a few games remaining in the season, it faltered down the stretch and missed a chance for a playoff berth.

“This season had a lot of potential, I think at the end it was disappointing,” said senior midfielder Natalie Fortna. “I wish we would have made one PAC game.”

Throughout the season, Waynesburg went into overtime four times, only winning one of them early in the season against Franciscan University.

The team will have to fill junior Courtney Syfert position next year, as she will graduate early, and three senior members in Fortna; midfielder Hannah Roth, who spent her first two years at Waynesburg playing basketball, before joining the soccer team last season; and defender Mckenzie Shaffer, who started 67 games over four seasons as a key player in the Yellow Jacket defense.

Heethuis said the four girls leaving will be missed in some capacity, but the Jackets do have a host of young girls to bring back for 2018-19.

“We lose Courtney in net which will be a big loss for us and we lose Mckenzie at center back, so those will be big spots to fill in,” said Heethuis. “We have some freshmen that took on big roles in the backfield and they really stepped up and did a great job.”

Heethuis said the team is experienced and will have to fill the spots with the recruits they are looking at and are hoping they join the family that the upperclassmen have helped develop over the years.

Now, it’s just a waiting game for the rest of the team as they will not be back in action until spring.