Senior Rachel Cisneros has played soccer since she was 9 years old and went on to play varsity soccer in high school.
“My junior year (in high school) was COVID, that kind of messed up a lot of recruiting with colleges and I was also just kind of lazy,” Cisneros said.
Her passion spurred her to lead the women’s soccer club at Wichita State. She joined as a freshman. Since then, she has taken over as president and has been working on advertising the club through social media and hanging up flyers around campus.
She said the club has been growing recently, but struggled last year with getting more players.
“I think that was partly because of COVID and everyone was still coming back, but this year we have a ton of new girls,” Cisneros said.
She said that the club has been working on getting a sponsorship with Scheels to get equipment like balls and jerseys.
Cisneros said there are no tryouts for the club but anyone can show up at practices.
“When we play in games it helps to have experience but it’s not really that important to win,” Cisneros said. “It’s more about having fun.”
The club will have four games this season: home and away series with Kansas State and the University of Kansas. They competed against Creighton University and University of Nebraska-Lincoln last season but those teams switched leagues.
“We want to play more games, but we need more people in our league, but they’re just like normal games, we travel or they come here,” Cisneros said.
Cisneros said that the games are standard regular soccer games with 90 minutes and two halves.
“They are just normal games, we travel or they come here, full field. full time, 11 v 11,” Cisneros said.
Megan Brandley is the vice president of the club, she began participating in sports when she was a little girl because her brothers used to play a multitude of sports, including soccer.
“I just kind of fell in love with it, and eventually I quit all other sports and just focused on that one,” Brandley said.
She said joining the club has been a lot of fun and there are a lot of benefits to joining.
“It’s a good way to meet people throughout campus, make some connections, stay active, play a sport you might have used to love and you want to get back into it or try something new,” Brandley said.
Brandley said that they welcome all skill levels.
“Just come out to practice, see it, try it out, you don’t have to practice,” Cisneros said. “It just takes that one first step, just come out and have fun.”
The women’s soccer club practices Tues. and Thurs. at Metroplex Field 3 on the corner of Oliver and 29th. More information for the club can be found on their instagram @wichitastate.womenssoccer.
