If you’re a retrievers fan that believes in the pre-season coaches polls this year may not be one you should pay attention to.  The coaches polls have been released and they say volleyball will finish in fourth place, which is a good pre-season projection, but they also say both men’s and women’s soccer will finish in last place.  But if you just go by the pre-season coaches polls you might be surprised come the end of the season.

While fourth place is a good pre-season ranking for the volleyball team, they are perfectly capable of making a run at a conference championship.  Baring the last season struggles that really hurt UMBC the last two seasons, there is not much keeping them from winning the regular season championship, thus winning them the very important home field advantage for the tournament.  Though Sara Ball, Bridget Scheetz, and Sara Hill are no longer with the team, coach Ian Blanchard still returns a very talented group that has a great mixture of youth still reaching their potential and experience.  If they can play up to their potential, especially late in the season the team could be very dangerous.

As for men’s soccer, if history shows anything it is that coach Pete Caringi does not lose very often.  In 19 years of being the team’s head coach he has only coached three losing teams and he has never coached back-to-back losing seasons.  Also, he has a knack for getting into the post season. The only times his teams have missed the conference tournament were the three years that he coached a sub .500 team.  What killed the team last year was inexperience and injuries.  The team may lose a very talented senior class but they bring in an even better freshman class who all play well above what their graduating year’s may tell you.  They may not win the conference but they should be much improved from last year and much better than last place.  No matter what they will have their work cut out for them with a very challenging non-conference schedule highlighted by games against Virginia Tech, Loyola, and Towson (all at home) and while being in the nations toughest mid-major soccer conference as the America East is ranked the sixth toughest conference in the NCAA.

While the women’s team is not expected to win much this season, something is to be said about how they have finished in last place only once in their seven years in the America East.  Two conference wins has guaranteed a team to finish higher than last place since 1991 and occasionally one conference win has.  While coach Alyssa Radu admits it will be a rebuilding season after winning just four games in the last three seasons (2006 was the team’s lone season in last place after finishing conference play with zero wins), the team certainly has the ability to win at least one conference game if only because of their location to the rest of the league.  UMBC carries a huge home field advantage against other teams because the closest conference team (Binghamton) is four hours away and teams stay in a hotel for usually two nights when playing UMBC.  The other big advantage is the weather.  The rest of the conference plays in the New York Area and north, meaning colder weather.  When they travel to UMBC however the humidity is much greater and the air is much heavier, possibly explaining why the women’s soccer team has had at least one home conference win each year except 2006.

So do not worry UMBC fans, the coaches polls are practically meaningless and rarely, if ever, accuarately predict the entire conference.  There will be surprises.