A new semester has begun for ABAC, and with that, a new season has begun for the Women’s Soccer team. Many questions may arise about the team’s current state; more importantly, how does the team plan on getting better?
In the 2024-2025 season, they finished with a record of 3-12, and in the 2025-2026 season, they finished with a 2-13 record. With these past records, you’d think the program would be dealing with some hardships or at least struggling, but in fact, quite the opposite.
Ever since its debut in 2006, ABAC Women’s Soccer has been part of the NJCAA. That was until the year 2024, when ABAC made the transition for Women’s Soccer, placing it in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
The NAIA is an association that oversees college programs for smaller institutions to provide a mix of education and student development through different intercollegiate sports. This also helped student-athletes by providing opportunities for students to earn athletic scholarships from larger schools.
Coach Earls, head coach of ABAC’s women’s soccer team, said “We made the jump to NAIA, which is a big step from a two-year to four-year program.” Earls continued by saying, “The one downside to that is we joined a really difficult conference when it comes to soccer; anywhere from three to four of the top 20 in the nation are in our conference every year.”
With the current state of the Fillies, it is clear that winning games isn’t the main priority, as stated by Coach Earls, “Everybody wants to win games and that will come, but you have to bide your time until it does come.” The main priority for the Fillies is just one word — improvement.
Earls mentioned that he didn’t expect the team to go out and win the conference in their first year. Having to make such a big jump into a larger association and a more difficult conference, it’s obvious the main goal is to make sure the team improves and does better than the previous year.
With the jump in brackets, ABAC Women’s Soccer made the transition from JUCO to 4-year, meaning students could play for up to four years, rather than the past limiting it to only two years. This means that development and improvement can happen more easily, as the team is no longer limited in time. Earls said, “Now, I can take a freshman that I normally wouldn’t take as a JUCO player because now I can build her for four years.”
With the Fillies’ season starting, the original question is, “How does the team plan on getting better?” The answer is: Constant improvement. The goal is for the players to stay invested in the game while continuing to perform better than they did previously, instead of focusing solely on wins or losses.
When asked about what defines a successful program without including a win-loss record, he said, “For us, I tell the girls to get better at every game; we play better than we did in the last game. We’re doing better this season than we did last season. It’s improvement, you know; we’re building up to go from the bottom of the pack to the middle pack, and maybe we’ll be up upper pack. It’s a process; a lot of the girls have bought into that, and it makes me happy to coach them, and they make it worth it and enjoyable.”
For more information on the fillies upcoming soccer games, visit their Instagram page, @abacsoccer or email Coach Earls at christopher.earls@abac.edu