Written by: Alex Tostado

The VSU women’s soccer team will play its final regular season game on Friday at West Georgia.

VSU enters the match with a record of 8-3-3 (4-2-3). The Blazers can clinch the No. 2 seed and first round bye in the Gulf South Conference Tournament with a win and a Christian Brothers loss or tie at Delta State.

“West Georgia is going to play us hard because they need the win to get into the tournament,” VSU head coach Mel Heinz said.

Coach Heinz was not happy with Sunday’s loss against North Alabama but is not using the game as an excuse.

“We’re not pouting just because we didn’t get the results we wanted on Sunday,” Coach Heinz said. “It doesn’t feel good. We’re not happy about it, but we can’t go back. We’ve got to go forward.”

Coach Heinz has been telling her girls that they need to eliminate mistakes and play to the best of their abilities.

“When you lose, it’s hard to bounce back real quickly,” Coach Heinz said. “We will go Friday and show that we can bounce back – show that we still are a very good team and eliminate a few mistakes that we made.”

Coach Heinz is not worried about her team overlooking the UWG game because the game has too much riding on it.

“The game rides on so much,” Coach Heinz said. “Nothing in the tournament is set until after the Friday games. If we took care of everything early on and the results didn’t matter and we knew we were going to be No. 1 or No. 2, then yeah, (it probably would be easy to overlook Friday’s game).”

Coach Heinz is not making excuses for where her team is now but is thankful that her young program is making big improvements.

“I know that I have encouraged our program to not lose games, (and) we want to go to the national tournament,” Coach Heinz said. “That the bar is high, but we have only lost three games, and we are three years in. To me, our program is still making big strides because we are a program that is still growing. At this point, we will take whatever we put ourselves in. If we get (the second seed), that’s great, and if not, we are playing soccer and that’s what (the players) are here for.”