Let the speculation begin.
After a 2005 season that saw both Boston University’s women’s soccer and field hockey teams vault to the top of the America East standings and take stabs at their respective NCAA championships, the clubs are poised for another run in the 2006 season. Both teams have been selected No. 1 overall in their preseason conference coaches’ polls, joining a strong corps of BU fall sports that also includes the second-ranked men’s soccer team.
No team looks more dominant on paper than the women’s field hockey club, which is a unanimous pick to repeat as the America East champion. Last year the team breezed to a 16-6 overall record on the strength of a 5-1 mark within America East, before falling to the University of Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The team received all five possible first place votes in the coaches’ poll to finish with 25 points. Next was the University of Maine with 18 points, then Albany, the only America East squad to beat the Terriers last season, in a tie with New Hampshire with 15. Vermont and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County rounded out the poll with 12 and five points, respectively.
Such lofty preseason expectations may be relatively new for the field hockey team, but for the women’s soccer team, it’s just what they’ve come to expect. Following a season in which they won the conference championship and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, the Terriers earned the top spot in the America East preseason coaches’ poll for the third straight year.
The team returns four starters from the club that beat the University of Connecticut in the first round of the NCAAs before falling to league rival Boston College two days later.
Those successes were enough to earn the Terriers six out of a possible eight first-place votes in the coaches’ poll for a total of 61 points, just edging out Maine (58 points). Binghamton University was third with 49 points, followed by New Hampshire, Vermont and Hartford.
And the women won’t be the only soccer team with high aspirations this season. The men’s soccer team also scored high in its preseason poll, ranking second overall despite a 2005 season that saw the club finish in sixth place.
The men were just a point away from claiming the top spot, earning a league-high four first-place votes and 53 points overall to finish just shy of Vermont’s 54 points. Next was defending champion Stony Brook with 49 points, Binghamton with 48 and UMBC with 38.