AACC’s soccer teams have finished their 2023 seasons.
Women’s soccer ended with an 8-5-3 record, losing to Community College of Baltimore County Essex by one goal in overtime during the NJCAA Region 20 Division II championship game.
Men’s soccer finished the regular season with a 3-6-4 record.
Women’s soccer head coach Jim Griffiths said although the end of the season was disappointing, “that’s soccer.”
“Very disappointing end of the season to lose in overtime the way we did, but that’s also soccer sometimes,” Griffiths said. “Sometimes, you know, goofy things happen and you just got to take it.”
Second-year transfer studies student Megan Miller, who plays midfielder, said the team played hard but had to adapt to playing on grass rather than on turf and was not able to win the game.
“We battled hard, but I think at the end we just fell a little short and we just weren’t able to finish all the way through.”
Miller also gave credit to this season’s coaching staff.
“I would probably just emphasize on how the coaching staff was really just amazing this year,” Miller said. “I don’t know if a lot of people know coach Griff but he’s definitely a coach that everyone should know and all the coaches overall, they’re really great people who supported us no matter what.”
Griffiths said the season was positive although injuries affected the team.
“The injury bug was just constant throughout the beginning and the middle half, middle third of the season,” Griffiths said. “So we were never really fully healthy until the last couple weeks of the season.”
Men’s soccer did not qualify for the playoffs after making it to the national tournament for the past two years.
Men’s soccer head coach Nick Cosentino said the season was tough and that the team came up short of its goals.
“Well, it was a tough season record-wise, result-wise,” Cosentino said. “We had a solid team, we had a deep team and we were coming off two years in a row where we qualified for the national tournament.”