The NDA girls soccer team started their season last Monday.

The team will look to repeat last year’s amazing success and hopefully will win another state title.

The team lost some key seniors last year including Grace Shaw, Trudy Quidzinski and Madi Polack.

Shaw is now playing at Michigan Tech and Quidzinski is playing at NIU in Illinois. Polack did not pursue college soccer and is now at the University of Madison.

However, the team still has some players that were key to the success of the state team last year.

Seniors Keighley Blindauer, Jenna Cuene and Izzy Kellner will be key in the Tritons’ success this year.

“I’m excited to get started and get back to the sport I love,” said Blindauer.

The Tritons were able to defeat five-time defending champs Catholic Memorial last year but will have a tough time even making it back to state this year.

The team lost their two top scorers and will have to play another defending state championship team, Bay Port, multiple times throughout the year.

Coach Bob Rickards has named four captains for this year’s team. They are Jenna Cuene, Izzy Kellner, Alana Bergin and Sydney VanWycken. Two of these are juniors.

“I like our captains and I feel like they could lead us deep into the playoffs,” said Blindauer.

The team is lucky enough to start the season in some decent weather and will most likely have all their games as scheduled. The team had a scrimmage this last weekend against West De Pere that seemed to have gone decently well.

However, the team is still not necessarily ready for season play.

“We’ve only had a week of practice and had one scrimmage, plus this last week was mostly running and conditioning,” said Blindauer.

Coach Rickards is somewhat famous for his first week of conditioning. This includes 120-yard sprints and sometimes 10, 30, 60-yard ladders.

The team has their first game on Thursday against Fox Valley Lutheran at NDA.

Kickoff is at 6:30, and the players are hoping for some fans to brave the cold and come to the season opener.