As of last week, the Olds College Broncos women's soccer team was ranked sixth out of 15 teams in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA) national rankings.
"We've done well so far. It really helped us in the rankings to beat SAIT," head coach Niels Slotboom said during an interview with the Albertan. "I mean, SAIT of course, they're ranked very highly, having been unbeaten last year, so beating them obviously got us some attention."
He said there's potential for the lady Broncos to move even higher in the rankings.
"I don't think the team on the women's side has even reached their potential yet, so there's definitely some room for improvement, and who knows what the national rankings will look like (in the future)," he said.
Slotboom said this year, things are a bit different for the women's team. They no longer have to rely on just one or a few impact players.
"We probably have the most depth that we've ever had in our program. And that goes from the goalkeeper all the way to the forwards," he said.
"So far, it's been a complete team effort. We've had several different goal scorers. It's really been a team effort, which I think is a big difference from previous years, when we might have relied a little bit more on really key players.
"I think right now it's more of a consistent effort across the entire team, which is really getting us to the next level," he added.
The next action for the Broncos women's soccer team occurs this weekend, when they take on the Lethbridge College Kodiaks and the Medicine Hat College Rattlers.
Slotboom essentially knows what to expect from the Kodiaks — a very challenging team.
"Lethbridge has been strong the last few years and we've tied them every time we've played them, so they've always been good games, so I'm expecting they'll be one of the stronger teams as well, so that will be a really good kind of halfway mark of our season as well. We will have almost played everybody once," he said.
"So it'll be a really good measure to see where we are at, if we truly are at the top (end) of the league, like we are now or the picture changes. Hopefully it doesn't, but you never know."
He's not sure what to expect from the Rattlers this season because they just changed coaches.
"It's hard to say what they're going to look like because everything has been changing there, so I'm not really sure what it'll look like once we get to them," he said.
