HELENA, Mont. – Carroll College women's soccer is looking to bounce back from a couple of non-conference losses last weekend with two matches Saturday and Sunday in Spokane, Washington.

The Saints open play against NCAA DIII Whitman College Saturday at 2:30 p.m. before playing NCAA DII Whitworth University Sunday at 3:30 p.m. with both games at Whitworth's home field.

Head coach David Thorvilson is eager to give the girls a chance to build upon last weekend and have an opportunity for new players to gain experience. 

"We knew all along that we were going to be a very young team, graduating eight starters off last year's team," Thorvilson said. It means a lot of rebuilding, even if you are an upperclassman. This past weekend against high level competition showed us that if we make mistakes it's going to cost a couple of goals, which it did. 

"Our biggest preparation is just learning from those mistakes, and then trying to do the simple things very well and building from there. So, going into this weekend we get to play two relatively young teams. We're just hoping that we learned a bit from this last weekend and we can show that a bit going into this weekend."

Graduating eight players last year has created an opportunity for young players and reserves to earn quality first team minutes. Thorvilson is leaning on some experienced midfielders to provide leadership to the team while they learn how to play together.

"Our whole backline is kind of relearning each other," Thorvilson said. "We graduated a goalkeeper and three starters out of our backline last year, so trying to get young center backs onto the same page, communication-wise, on how we want to play, and that starts with Devan Murfitt all the way through the center backs and up the middle of the field where we do have a fair amount of strength. We have senior Christina Plank and sophomore Taryn Neameyer, who played significant minutes for us last year. We want them to be kind of the middle of the pitch leadership, and then, like I said, we need it to come from our back line."

Coaches, players, and fans alike are hoping that both games will continue as scheduled. Air quality is currently being monitored to determine whether or not the go-ahead will be given. For the Saints, smoke in the air is nothing new.

So far, it has not caused the team to alter plans too much. 

"Since preseason we've pretty much had to deal with some kind of issue with the smoke. We had one day where we physically had to cancel practice because it was above the 150 (Air Quality Index) mark," Thorvilson noted. "We did a chalk talk and had a breakdown of game film. We've tried to implement that more this year, especially when it comes to conditioning and exceptionally hard work, because of the smoke, but for the most part we've been able to be close to normal."

"I hope we get to play," he added.

Live stats and video are available via the Whitworth Stretch Internet Portal.