UA soccer continues hectic schedule

Arizona Daily Wildcat

The Arizona women's soccer team weekend agenda goes like this: UCLA (4-2-1) tomorrow and Southern Cal (5-2-1) Sunday.

Road trips are usually difficult, but one home game in a month and a half of play is practically insane.

"They (road trips) are tough," Wildcat head coach Lisa Fraser said. "It's tough to play back to back, you don't normally do that. Normally you play Friday to Sunday. Scheduling as late as we did, we had to take what we could get. So we're learning a lot."

Arizona (1-5) faces two schools that aren't totally foreign to the Wildcats' first-year woes. The Bruins and Trojans are not that far-removed from the same predicament.

USC struggled last year but has improved this season after its first year of recruiting. UCLA did well last year and has continued this season.

"They're second-year programs," Fraser explained. "It's going to be two tough games, they're both very good teams."

Although the record may suggest disappointment, Fraser said the quality of the play is more indicative of the team's accomplish-ments than its record.

"I think we've improved tremendously," Fraser said. "I've started three other programs and I don't think we've ever had a team that has played as well as this team did it's first year."

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The Arizona men's and women's cross country teams will compete tomorrow at the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif., and hope to alleviate shoe problems that plagued them Sept. 24 at the Mountain West Classic in Missoula, Mont.

"We wore new shoes, and some of our runners had real problems with them," said UA head coach Dave Murray of the blisters and bloody feet that crossed the finish line.

The No. 11 Arizona men and the 15th-ranked women both finished fourth in Montana, but they expect better results this weekend.

Two-time All-America senior Martin Keino, who has won both races this season, will lead the Wildcat men in the 8,000-meter at 5 p.m. tomorrow on the Stanford golf course.

The Wildcat women, led last week by three top 10 finishers, will run a 5,000 at 4 p.m. tomorrow.

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