Welcome back to the Michigan Insider here on the Big 1050 WTKA online at the big 1050.com, and it's

time for our check-in with Michigan women's soccer coach. Jen Klein, it's been a couple of weeks, but it's a great time to catch up with coaches. We're about to get underway with Big Ten play. But coach, first of all, welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm doing great. Yeah, so excited to be back on. you know, it's been a wild non-conference, but excited that we are now through that and ready to kick off Big Ten season. Yeah, speaking of wild non-conference, we're not going to relive all of it, but I just kind of want you to take us through the ebbs and flows of it where open up with a couple of early victories, the win over Villanova and the home win over Detroit, Merritt. So we've talked about some of these here on the air. But then you end up where you have the four straight games where you stub your toe, the Alabama and Georgia games and Notre Dame games on the road, the Western Michigan game at home. But then you're able to come back a week after you're lost to Western Michigan this past Sunday just a few days ago. You have a 2- win over Youngstown state so you're able to snap that losing streak as you embark onto

Big Ten play kind of take us through those ebbs and flows these last couple of weeks and now that

your team is back a little bit of an upswing yeah I think a big thing is you know like our

non-conference schedule was it was extremely challenging not only just the opponents that we were playing but you know we like our non-conference schedule was extremely challenging, not only just

the opponents that we were playing, but, you know, we went on the road and played against

a very good quality opponent, but it was done with the intention in preparation for the Big Ten.

You know, the Big Ten is now one of the best conferences in the country for women's soccer,

and we knew to expose ourselves to quality we needed to go play quality non-conference opponents.

So as much as, you know, the results didn't go in our favor, I think as we looked,

every game that we came out of, you know, we got better and improved. And I think,

you know, getting that win at the very, at the end on conference going into conference, I think

kind of brought everything together. But, you know, the preparation and, and the exposure that

we got in those games against Alabama, Georgia, Notre Dame, Western Michigan

is exactly what we needed to feel battle-tested, to build that confidence that, you know,

we're ready. We've gone through the gauntlet. We're on the other side of hard,

hard from our non-conference, so we're prepared for the heart of big 10 so you know definitely wish

you know I think everybody as you're a competitor you know you want different results but I think

the preparation and the exposure I think has prepared us for for what the big 10 is going to bring

there's a question that I always ask you as we embark on big 10 play I'm going to get to that in a

moment but first coming off of the two nothing went over youngown State on Sunday, it was pups at the pitch.

Do you hear the dogs at the game?

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