A young and inexperienced Oswego women’s soccer team has one goal this season: to compete and make the SUNYAC tournament for the sixth year in a row. 

Despite the youth, with six transfers as well as six freshmen, they still have three graduate students and two seniors from the 2025 squad that finished (6-6-5, 3-2-4 SUNYAC) and lost in the first round of the conference tournament to Fredonia in a heartbreaking two-overtime loss.

With multiple players gone after last year’s run, Head Coach Brian McGrane knew he had to get on the recruitment trail this past offseason.

“We knew a long time ago that we were going to be losing a lot of our key players,” McGrane said. “So recruiting was very important after having 4-5 years with this past group of core players.”

One of the newcomers that arrived in the port city is midfielder Julia Carter, a graduate transfer from Geneseo, who started in 14 games for the Knights last season. McGrane also mentioned Solange Catano-Matip, a sophomore, who saw little playing time last season, but he expects will step into a bigger role this season.

One returner the Lakers will be relying on game in, and game out is senior forward Kyla Sustad. Oswego’s leading scorer from a year ago will also be given more of a team leadership role this season, while also having to navigate being at the top of opposing teams’ scouting reports.

“At the end of the spring, we had a long talk about what her role was going into this year,” McGrane said. “She was such a focal point on everyone’s scouting report last fall, and it’s only going to be the same thing this fall. Her mentality coming in, whether it be by example or vocally—she’s a relatively reserved kid to begin with, so her play usually does the talking—but she’s been really, really good being a bit more vocal this season.”

The Lakers have already participated in three scrimmages, allowing the new team to build chemistry before the regular season gauntlet begins.

“I think we look really good,” Sustad said. “We’ve been doing a lot of team bonding outside of practices and all of that, just getting together, like we’re really learning how to play with each other, and we’ve done well connecting.”

Sustad also believes the team’s work during the preseason has helped prepare the Lakers for the challenges ahead.

“We have a lot of new players, but in our scrimmages the last two days, we’ve really been connecting and learning how to play with each other,” Sustad said. “We just really wanna compete in every game, I think we’ll be able to make the tournament, and that’s our number one goal.”

While the ultimate shining goal is to compete in the SUNYAC tournament, McGrane emphasized that the Lakers must first focus on what’s in front of them: Brockport, Hamilton and Geneseo.

“I think our first three games will be a very important test,” McGrane said. “So I think these three games are going to be very important for us. It’ll tell us a lot about our younger players. The reality is we want to make it into the tournament; then it’s one game at a time.”

Oswego kicked off their regular season when they hosted Brockport on September 1 at 4:00 p.m.