Georgia Southern women's soccer completed its Spring slate with a perfect 4-0 mark and head coach Chris Adams is excited about what his young squad showed on the field and how it can help the team in the upcoming Fall 2025 season.
The Eagles were able to play all four Spring matches at Bo Pitts Field, and took advantage with a 2-0 win over Georgia College to open up the slate. Georgia Southern then defeated North Florida, 3-1; the College of Charleston, 4-1; and finished off the Spring with a 2-0 win over Mercer.
"In the Fall, we were able to find a goal in each game, but often getting multiple goals can be the difference between winning and losing, so that was a focal point going into the Spring," Coach Adams said. "Coming out of the Fall, the stat that just resonated with me was that we were 2-8 in one-goal games. And having injuries to our forward line for most of the season presented our biggest challenge. So we needed to figure out how to score more goals and from that, we had to look at what the strength of our team was right now. Because we had relied so heavily on the midfield, we felt like we had a lot of midfield players who were in a good place. So we changed our shape and formation all Spring.
"We tinkered a lot in the Fall, probably a little too much," Coach Adams said. "But we took some of the things we learned from that experience and carried that over into the Spring. And we had the opportunity to teach the wide players to join the attack. We've also been very good at pressing and counter attacking. So as a result, it was great to see us score two goals in game one, then three goals in game two, and four goals in game three of the Spring. Then we took Spring Break, and afterwards played our final opponent of the Spring in Mercer - a game that was 2-2 in the Fall, we won 2-0. So one, to score multiple goals, and two, not allow them to score on us was a very solid result. Playing all the matches at home made it a bit easier but I think what we did was schedule four games that are a coin flip where it could go either way, so very pleased that we were able to get back to our winning ways and win all four Spring games."
In the past, the Eagles have used the Spring as an opportunity to work with multiple formations and multiple combinations of players. This Spring was no exception, and Coach Adams was pleased with how his players reacted to the changes.
"I think they responded well," Coach Adams said. "Our new formation has our midfielders playing higher up the field; I think last year when we played the 3-5-2, we got pinned in and lost our attack because we had so many players back. In this new formation, you attack with more, but you still have enough in the back to defend with quality. We taught the wide players to join the attack. When we're defending, they're a wide midfielder, but when we're attacking, they're a wide forward. I think it just gives us more numbers going forward, which leads to more goal scoring chances. I think we were also a little more efficient in making our scoring chances count. The games that were frustrating in the Fall were games where we created chances but didn't have much production. We've become much more efficient at scoring in this new formation."
Youth was a big storyline for the Eagles in the Fall of 2024, with 17 of the 27 players on the Eagles' roster either freshmen or sophomores. That gives this Spring season a little more importance than usual as the young student-athletes take advantage of the opportunity to play together and develop chemistry on the field leading into this upcoming Fall.
"We have 3 seniors this year, and we only lost two starters from the Fall, so the continuity of those younger players getting so much experience is huge," Coach Adams said. "We set the lineup based on who's been the best in practice, and I remember in our Kennesaw State match [on August 22], when the lineups were announced just noticing the class each person was, and we had seven freshmen and sophomores out on the field. It hit me just how young we actually were then. Some of that on-the-job training will benefit us in the future as we had to learn on the job and sometimes we had to learn some tough lessons, but I think the experience and the continuity of playing together; the versatility of playing multiple formations and the understanding of how to play those, will be key. The toughest thing about the Fall is that you have a couple of weeks of preseason to implement formations, but once you start the regular season, you only have two practices before playing a match. Implementation of changing a formation or something is a challenge when you only have two days to do so. That's the important part and will be beneficial to us, and we also played quite a bit of depth as well. We pretty much played everybody throughout."
