Washington’s girls’ soccer team rolled through the regular season a year ago, but a last-minute goal forced them out of the playoffs in the first round. This year, with another year added to what is now an experienced group, the expectations continue to grow for the Lady Pack.

Things got off to a hot start when the Lady Pack decimated Northeastern, 9-0, in Tuesday’s season opener. Jordan Prescott put five in the net, and Sydney Walker had a hat trick in the win, too. The trio of Prescott, Walker — both juniors — and senior Sydney Edwards showed off their offensive chemistry early on.

Washington is playing a stacked non-conference schedule. Coach Ed Rodriguez hopes that his squad will gain valuable experience, then roll through the 2-A Eastern Plains Conference to earn favorable playoff seeding. One main objective for the season is to improve defensively. The Lady Pack has usually been able to score, but Rodriguez believes shutdown defense will be the key to getting over the hump.

Here’s what he had to say about how the team looks.

 

What the expectations for this season are:

“The goal is to win the conference again and not give up a game. … We want to finish perfect in the conference and secure a good seed for the playoffs. We want to see how far we can go. We feel like if we can get our defense strong, we can make a good run.”

 

How the team looks right now:

“We went to a (preseason) jamboree we played in last year and we looked a lot better this year against 3-A and 4-A schools. We’ve been, traditionally, slow starters, but we’re a little further ahead at this time than we were last year. We’ve got a couple girls that have transferred (in). One is from South Mecklenburg. She’s going to be a huge asset.”

 

Why the team is focusing on its defense early on:

“Even though we feel confident, we’re going to concentrate on playing a little bit better defense — staying in the game no matter who we’re playing. Good defense leads to creating more opportunities for us. That’s our focus this year.”

 

How the non-conference schedule looks:

“We’ve got two games against Havelock, one against Southwest Onslow, one game against Rose and one game against Terry Sanford. I wanted tough competition. … Three of those games were just assigned to me (in tournaments).”

 

What he expects from the 2-A Eastern Plains Conference:

“In the last two years, we’ve been loaded with freshmen and sophomores. This year, we’re loaded with juniors. We have 10 or 12 juniors. This is the first time I’ve had a mostly upperclassmen team since 2014. Then I’ll only lose one starter after this year, and we’ll get another two or three players that play a lot.”