GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – Colorado Mesa women's soccer will play their first full weekend schedule of the season with a pair of neutral site matches in Pueblo this Friday and Sunday.
The Mavs will battle with Cal State San Bernardino at 3 p.m. on Friday and then face Newman (from Wichita, Kansas) at 10 a.m. on Sunday. Both games will take place on the campus of CSU Pueblo.

Colorado Mesa will be looking to extend an unbeaten start to the season after beating Lubbock Christian 3-0 in their first game of the season last Friday.

Looking Back
The Mavericks showed no signs of season-opening rust, comprehensively beating a Lubbock Christian team that was picked fourth in the Lone Star Conference 3-0 in Grand Junction.

Abby Fotheringham, a transfer who previously made stops at Snow College and Utah State, scored two goals in her Maverick debut and Sauvelyne Randel added a penalty kick goal to round out the scoring. The Mavs outshot LCU 15-11 and had six shots on goal to LCU's four.

Keeper of the Week
The Mavericks pulled a slight surprise on Friday by handing a season-opening start to true freshman goalkeeper Keely Wieczorek.

The move paid immediate dividends, as Wieczorek made four saves in a shutout victory that led to her being named as the season's first RMAC Goalkeeper of the Week. The Camas, Washington native is no stranger to big moments, having delivered a Washington 4A state title to Camas High School by making two saves in the penalty kick shootout in 2021.

With both Wieczorek and redshirt junior Chloe Dody, who started 18 of 19 matches last season and earned RMAC Honorable Mention All-Conference in 2022, the Mavericks have two legitimate starting keepers on the roster who are sure to push each other for playing time throughout the 2023 season.

Becoming Sauvelyne
A Maverick feature story released earlier this week detailed Sauvelyne Randel's story of being adopted from Haiti and going by an American nickname but choosing to go by her birth name recently after reconnecting with her Haitian heritage.

Read Patti Arnold's story here.

Randel, who was CMU's joint top returning scorer with six goals and two assists last season, got her Sauvelyne season off to a perfect start by drawing a foul in the penalty box and converting the resulting penalty kick herself for CMU's second goal of the afternoon.

Road Trippin'
Colorado Mesa's next six games will be away from home. After the two neutral site games in Pueblo this weekend, the Mavs will then face Angelo State and West Texas A&M in Durango the following weekend. Colorado Mesa's RMAC season then opens with two true road games, with the Mavs trekking to New Mexico Highlands for a September 22 match and Adams State on September 24.

What goes around comes around, however, so after the stretch of six matches and one month without a home game, the Mavs will play four of five matches at home from October 1-15.

About Cal State San Bernardino
Cal State San Bernardino is off to a 1-1 start this season. The Yotes (short for Coyotes) rolled to a dominant 6-0 win over Fresno Pacific before dropping a 1-0 match to a Westmont College team that was playing its second-ever game as a Division II school last Sunday.

The Yotes were picked ninth out of 12 teams in the California College Athletic Association (CCAA) Preseason Coaches Poll. Last season, CSUSB finished 7-6-4 to achieve their first winning season since 2016. The Yotes went 4-2 in non-conference play last season before playing to a 3-4-4 record in the CCAA.

Cal State San Bernardino returns last season's leading scorer in Nathaly Losada Lucumi, who had six goals and two assists last season. Lucumi had one of the team's six goals in the win over Fresno Pacific. Six different players scored for the Yotes against FPU, including newcomer Kayla Bergin, a junior college All-American last season, and juniors Sofia Melgoza and Alyssa Rubio. Goalkeeper Leila Peregrina has made four saves while allowing just one goal.

The Yotes are coached by Mark Peters. Peters began his tenure as CSUSB's women's head coach in 2021 but has a long history with CSUSB, having played for the men's team in 2009 and switched between assistant coaching for the men's and women's programs throughout most of the 2010's.

Colorado Mesa and Cal State San Bernardino have played twice before, but not for 14 years. The Mavericks picked up a pair of one-goal wins, winning 2-1 in 1998 and 1-0 in 2009.

About Newman
Newman, a Division II school in Wichita, Kansas, is 1-1 in 2023 after losing to Southern Nazarene University 3-0 and beating Northwestern Oklahoma State 2-1.
 
The Jets were picked last out of 12 teams in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) Preseason Coaches Poll. They struggled to a 1-15-2 record in 2022, which included an 0-10 mark away from home. Newman tallied its lone win against Nebraska-Kearney, who Colorado Mesa also beat 4-0 during the 2022 season behind four goals from Lila Dere.

Sophomore Maylani Birckbichler scored both goals for Newman in their victory and leads the team with four shots on goal. Junior and Wichita native Kinsey Logan tallied an assist. Senior goalie Jordan Webster has made eight saves while conceding four goals, including six stops in the one-goal win over Northwestern Oklahoma State.

Dylan Gruntzel is entering his second season as the Newman head coach. He previously spent two seasons as the head coach at Bethany College and four seasons as an assistant at Newman.

Newman and Colorado Mesa have played once before, during the 2019 season when the Jets handed CMU a 1-0 overtime loss in Grand Junction. The Jets finished that season 7-6-6.

Coach's Corner
Mavericks head coach Megan Remec is entering her fourth season at the helm of the CMU program.
 
In her debut campaign, played in spring 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Remec led the Mavericks to a winning 5-4-1 record and to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament for the first time since 2017.

In her first full season in fall 2021, CMU finished 14-4 with a 10-2 RMAC record, winning the program's first regular-season RMAC title since 2000. At the conclusion of the 2021 season, Remec was named the RMAC Coach of the Year, becoming just the second individual Colorado Mesa coach to win that honor and the first since that same 2000 season.

Prior to CMU, Remec spent five seasons as an assistant coach at RMAC rival MSU Denver and was also an assistant coach at Elmhurst College (Division III) in Illinois.