With September passing quickly and October approaching even faster, the women’s soccer team is trying to build on their 3-1 record.

With just four games under their belt, the team’s three victories came against Methodist, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and St. Mary’s College (Md.), with one loss to Gettysburg College.

New head coach Tati Korba said that although they are not happy to have lost to Gettysburg, “losses reveal a lot of things: the character of a team … and some of your weaknesses, so that we can immediately focus on those, make those better, and hopefully the very next game you’ve improved.”

With a perennially strong schedule, the team will face nationally ranked teams including Catholic University and Johns Hopkins University. These types of games will test how Korba’s coaching skills have influenced her new team.

Much like the team, Korba’s ultimate goal is to win a national championship.

“There are certainly no shortcuts to doing that. It’s a many step process to get there.  So, if that is the ultimate goal, I think going all the way down to the smallest goal is to really get buy-in from the team. Them putting the team first, putting the program first.  From there making them better individually, making them better as a team, taking care of the games we need to win,”  will all help the team see post-season play, said Korba.

She added that teams “don’t accidentally win a conference championship, especially in this conference.” The team must continue to improve in order to fulfill their goals.

Coming from a 12-year coaching career at Goucher College, Korba brought an experienced mindset and mentality.

“We did a lot of work at Goucher on team culture, on commitment and what that looks like. We worked a lot on getting the most out of the players that we had there. So I think coming here with the talent here that I inherited, a great team with a ton of talent, I think if we can bring a lot of that team culture, everybody invested, everybody committed, then we should be able to do great things,” she said.

With the positivity from her team, as well as their dedication, Korba believes her team will fare pretty well in the MAC.

“It’s a step process, and you don’t skip any steps.  You have to take care of every game, from the bottom of the conference obviously to the top,” Korba said. “And I think that, at the end of the season, you’re hoping for people to be healthy, you’re hoping that the team is invested, and even though you have hit some bumps in the road, everybody is still on track.”

She added that the team has to focus on doing everything they can to control the variables and then hope that everything goes their way.

“We definitely have the talent to be one of the top teams in the MAC,” Korba said.