How Nazareth University Dominated Women’s College Soccer
The Heart of a Champion
by Adison Fike
In the homey town of Pittsford, New York, just outside of the city of Rochester is Nazareth University: a small college, home to about 2,000 students–where a quarter of those students are athletes. Constantly recognized for their successes on and off the field are the team members of the women’s soccer team. Nazareth’s women's soccer program is one of the most successful in the Empire 8 Conference where they continue to dominate year after year.
You may ask yourself, “How can a team be so successful?” Well, besides endless hours of training and putting hours spent in the best you can be, you have to build a sense of community, as these girls become your home away from home.
Foundation of Success
With the establishment of the program unknown, we can assume that the most recent years of the program's success have been due to the work of the current coach, Gail Mann. Gail Mann returns for her 32nd season in 2024 as Nazareth's women's soccer head coach. Her 31-year coaching record of 358-161-75 computes to a .666 winning percentage and ranks among the top active coaches in Division III. She has a record of 145-21-20 (.834) in Empire 8 Conference games, which exceeds the records of other programs. Since 1995, she has coached 69 regional All-Americans and nine national All-Americans. Mann has been at the coaching forefront for all of the Golden Flyers' most significant achievements since taking over as coach in 1993. She was named E8 Coach of the Year in 1999, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2021 and 2022.
Leadership and Atmosphere
Head Coach Gail Mann, associate head coach Billy Stojanovski, assistant coaches Diana Groth and Julia Delgatti, and graduate assistants Madison Knowles and McKayla Hughes all play a huge role in fostering a winning culture. The coaches are well-rounded, experienced individuals who know how to motivate the girls to reach their full potential. With the graduate assistants, current team members can connect personally about what Nazareth soccer means to them and recognize that they need to make every moment count.
The team itself fosters a winning culture by first taking a step back and really getting to know each other off the field in order to build more chemistry for when they are on the field. Team captains from the 2024 season, Grace Palczeski, Annika Monfort, and Tatum Overton, expressed that this past season, one of the most important off-the-field activities was team bonding. Besides being together almost every day for practices and lifts, the team would hold movie and game nights at off-campus upperclassmen houses, attend bonding events at YMCA camps, and attend other Nazareth team sporting events. “We know everyone is not lucky enough to be 30 minutes away from home, so it's really important to have a family away from home to pick you up when you need it, make you laugh, and just have fun with on a day-to-day basis, and who better to be that family than your teammates”, says Annika Monfort.
What Comes Next
The 2023 soccer season for Nazareth marked them as the Empire 8 Champions for the third year in a row, while also making the NCAA tournament those same three years; however, in their 2024 season, their championship streak was put to an end by newly added Geneseo. “It sucks, especially as a senior who was about to 4-peat in the conference. It's really sad. There are positives, though; I mean, I made my best friends at Nazareth, and I couldn't have asked for anything better than that,” says Grace Palczeski. She later stated that even though there was no Cinderella story ending for the 2024 season, the team got to show the freshmen what it's like to be a Golden Flyer and motivate them for the next season ahead.
No team can win every championship, and the girls on the Nazareth women’s team are grateful to have won three in a row. This team, in recent years, has shown they are a force to be reckoned with and are going to give it their all each year to live up to the standards of the girls who played before them.
Junior captain Tatum Overton best explains why success will never end by saying, “There's no better feeling than getting to win and celebrate over and over again with my teammates, who feel more like sisters.”