With Kentucky atop the standings through the first weekend of Southeastern Conference play, women’s soccer is starting to garner some deserved attention.Sean Cartell of the SEC Digital Network has a pair of features on the team Tuesday. First, a story on freshman midfielder Courtney Raetzman, who came back from injury to lead UK to a pair of wins this weekend:
An inadvertent elbow to her right eye in practice that clocked Raetzman never got the rookie down. In fact, her only disappointment was that she couldn’t jump back in the game.“I’ve never seen a blackout like it and to get it in practice tells you something,” Kentucky head coach Jon Lipsitz said. “She never showed a negative emotion until I told her she couldn’t play. She literally cried. Here’s a kid who is only a few games into her freshman season and she is so passionate. It wasn’t the fact that she had gotten hurt, it was the fact that she couldn’t play that was so upsetting.”When Raetzman returned to action, she came up swinging.The Elk Grove, Ill., native was named the Southeastern Conference’s Freshman of the Week after scoring the match-winning goal in the team’s upset of then-No. 13 Florida and then provided two assists in a 3-0 victory against Mississippi State.“I definitely wanted to get back on the field playing and help our team,” Raetzman said. “No one wants to sit out and just watch games, everyone wants to be playing.”
Next, Cartell has a Q & A with head coach Jon Lipsitz. The two talk about the team’s expectations, youth, facilities and progress in recent years:
SEC Digital Network: You’re in your fourth season at Kentucky; how does the program’s progress compare to where you wanted it to be when you first started?Jon Lipsitz: “I am very happy with where we are, but we’re not there yet. I am proud of the work that all of us together have done and that goes from the administration to the coaches to the support staff and mostly to the players and their families. That doesn’t mean that we’re satisfied or we’re finished. We want so much more – how do we get there? We get better tomorrow. I always bring it back to that – to be your best tomorrow and move on from there. Obviously, I’m very proud of what we’ve done and I’m very proud of the players, but that’s only good enough for today.”
UK will take its show on the road this weekend for games at Arkansas and LSU.
