Eastern women’s soccer coach Steve Ballard believes that a new season starts this week for his soccer team.

Instead of focusing on the team’s loss to Illinois State on Saturday, the coach turned his team’s attention to the upcoming games that take a little added importance to both the team and the program as a whole.

This year the Panther’s are coming off another NCAA College Cup appearance, which is usually granted to Ohio Valley Conference teams when they win the conference tournament.

Besides the bids that are handed out to conference champions, not too many at-large bids are ever handed out to other OVC competitors.

With that in mind, every game against OVC competition holds some sort of significance considering that the team’s position in the tournament, and possibly the college cup, hang in the balance.

“It is an advantage for any team if they come out of the regular season on top in the OVC and get to play their tournament games at home,” senior forward Audra Frericks said. “But we haven’t been home for the last three years, so we are used to having to win in tough situations.”

In those three years that the Panthers have played the OVC tournament on the road, they have won all three tournaments.

Last season the Panthers lost to Samford in regular season conference play by only percentage points.

The Panthers didn’t lose a game in conference all year, but they did have two ties. The Bulldogs, however, lost one match during the season but had one more victory than Eastern did because they did not tie a game in the conference.

Eastern was also able to defeat the eventual champions when they played Samford at home about halfway through the season. The Panthers won the game 3-1, but because of the percentage points that Eastern still trailed Samford by, they weren’t able to lay claim to the OVC regular season championship and had to travel to Samford to defeat them in the tournament.

When in tournament play, the Panthers were able to defeat Samford after two overtimes in a game that granted Eastern access to play Missouri in the College Cup.

“Samford was, and still is, a good team,” Frericks said. “We aren’t worried about them at this point in time, even though we may have them in the back of our mind, because we have to worry about the conference games that face us first.”

Those games that will come up first for the Panthers will be the team’s first OVC match against Austin Peay this Friday on the road.

The next weekend game will be the following day when Eastern travels to Tennessee Tech.

“Non-conference games get us in a certain mindset, but there is something more to conference games; they impact the rest of our season,” Frericks said. “Some of the younger players may have some more nerves coming into this game. I know I did when I was younger, but for the older players the games mean a little more because we are more familiar with the teams.”

Ballard feels that the new start to the season will give his team a new focus for the rest of the season.

“Every game is important, but there is an added level of intensity when we play the teams in the OVC that we are familiar with,” Ballard said. “The competition throughout the conference is great, and we will be looking forward to playing some great games.”