Our goal is to finish in the top three. We set that as a realistic goal. But what comes with being picked to finish third is that level of expectation. These lists provide teams in the league with an incentive to beat you.

We're just hoping that we continue on our journey trying to play attractive soccer and give our kids multiple opportunities to be successful, because there's lots of opportunities against these outside opponents.

It's more or less for recruiting.

Last year, we were 11 freshmen just trying to get by. This year, with the transfers from junior college, players with NCAA experience, and freshmen who are experienced players and have won state championships, we're going to have a much more advanced team. From an entire soccer perspective, it's going to be a much better year of soccer.

Those injuries, I think, will affect us, but we have several injured players that I hope can be back in time for (today's game).

I think the door is wide open this year. It's going to be a race to the finish, because there are so many teams that can win the conference this year, as opposed to the past, where you could identify the favorite.