After nearly a month of soccer-hiatus since the World Cup in July, collegiate leagues are just now kicking off. Here at Georgetown, the men’s and women’s soccer teams have been putting in weeks of summer training in preparation for their 2026 season.
Women’s Soccer
After an undefeated regular season in the BIG EAST conference last year, the Hoya women’s soccer team suffered a devastating 2-0 loss in the conference final against Xavier University. It’s therefore no surprise they entered this fall season hungry to rewrite their narrative.
In their opener on Aug. 13, the Hoyas (1-0, BIG EAST) took down Fordham University (0-1, Patriot League) 4-1 with a solid performance. The Hoyas built light momentum, tallying two shots in the opening ten minutes and another in the 20th. At the halftime whistle, however, they had a total of only five shots on goal, none of which reached the back of the net.
It took the Hoyas until a 49th minute penalty by junior midfielder Lizzie Heller to break the ice against a weak Fordham offense. Both Heller and sophomore forward Abby Droner scored two shots a piece in the game with junior midfielder Caroline Spengler leading in assists. Fordham may have scored a late 81st minute goal, but a 4-1 victory certainly proves a step in the right direction.
After the match, head coach Dave Nolan noted, “We’re still trying to figure ourselves out, figure out our identity…We gave up a soft goal, which is not something I’m happy about. We need to look at that and explain to the kids what we can do better to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
A major factor dictating the team’s shift in identity is their attacking momentum. In 2025, Georgetown’s offense relied heavily on Maja Lardner, who led the team with 14 goals on the season but graduated in the spring. Lardner’s contributions were so profound that she received both the BIG EAST Female Scholar Athlete of the Year award and the BIG EAST Sport Excellence award.
In addition to Lardner, the team also graduated its second top scorer, Natalie Means, and top assist-producer, Shay Montgomery. Many players are now finding themselves in pressurized positions to fill the unmistakable void left by Lardner, Means, and Montgomery’s absence.
Ten new players have joined the squad for 2026—including graduate, starting midfielder Logan Jacobs who joined the Hoyas following an impressive undergraduate career at Yale University. Graduate keeper Reiley Fitzpatrick made her first appearance, too, after joining the team last spring from Northwestern University. She now has the most field minutes of any of Georgetown’s four goal keepers, a notable contrast from her senior season last fall where she did not touch the field once. While much of the limelight often falls on the field players, it will be worth observing how playing time evolves within this new goal keeper lineup.
As Nolan and the Hoyas work to build their team chemistry, they have a difficult schedule quickly approaching. In the NCAA pre-season rankings, the Hoyas are ranked No. 14, and have two top-25 opponents ahead of them in the coming weeks. The Hoyas face off against No. 11 University of Virginia, on Sept. 6 at home, but first must travel to California to face No. 1 Stanford University. The teams last played in 2023, with Stanford barely scraping away with a tie in the final five minutes of play. Tune into ESPN on Aug. 20 at 7 p.m. EST to watch the Hoyas fight back after last meeting’s blunder.
Men’s Soccer
Coming off of a BIG EAST Championship win and an impressive NCAA run during the 2025 season, the Georgetown men’s soccer team enters this fall as the No. 1 rank in the BIG EAST and No. 5 in NCAA Division 1. Last season, they lost their first two games, scored a late winner to win their third, and tied their fourth. You don’t need to understand soccer to see that a 1-2-1 record is not the hole any team wants to dig themselves out of at the start of a long season.
The more recent preseason buildup is already showing signs for a very different progression of early matches. The team’s second top scorer of 2025, junior forward Mitchell Baker, recently received Preseason BIG EAST Offensive Player of the Year honors and a unanimous Preseason All BIG EAST nomination. He also debuted for the Indonesian Men’s National Team this summer, scoring four goals in the ASEAN Hyundai Cup.
Alongside Baker, captain and junior defender Tate Lampman received Preseason BIG EAST Defensive Player of the Year. Meanwhile, senior midfielder Matthew van Horn, the fourth highest scorer of last season, also received Preseason All BIG EAST honors.
Awards aside, head coach Brian Wiese also signed seven new players for this fall, all of whom are freshmen. The group includes mostly midfielders with one defender and one goalie, almost perfectly replacing the departing class’s field positions. New players, however, cannot replace experience. The task of cultivating leadership and strategy will fall mostly to the returning players, who, despite typical patterns in college soccer, have managed to work together outside of the class year barrier. Freshman, sophomores and juniors alike have consistently made tactical and goal contributions on par with and at times more than the senior class themselves.
Such versatility is what makes these Hoyas a dangerous opponent, and with Wiese at the helm for his 21st year, there is no doubt another BIG EAST Championship title and a longer NCAA run on the horizon this fall. Their most significant stretch of games in terms of post-season tournament qualification comes around week two. On Aug. 30, the Hoyas will travel to Duke, whom they drew 0-0 last fall. One week later, they are set to take on the University of Maryland on Sept. 7 and High Point University on Sept. 11, two teams the Hoyas lost to early last year. How the Hoyas respond and adapt to that week’s adversities will determine the remainder of their season.
The Georgetown men’s soccer team will open their season at home on Aug. 20 against the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. EST, available for viewing on ESPN or in person at Shaw Field.
