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Women’s Soccer Looks to Extend its Decade of Dominance in NWC Play

By Mark Albanese, Director of Sports Communication

The Pacific Lutheran University women’s soccer team has had an iron grip on the top of the Northwest Conference standings over the last decade, winning at least a share of nine straight conference titles, a streak spanning back to the 2016 season.

For current players, they were still in elementary school the last time the Lutes didn’t close out the 16-game league slate at the top of the standings. Pacific Lutheran hasn’t lost a conference game in over two years, winning the league title outright with a 14-0-2 record in 2024 while sharing the title last fall with a 12-0-4 conference mark.

Lutes celebrate 9th straight NWC championship.

women's soccer celebrates winning 9th straight NWC title

The 2025 Lutes closed the season with a 12-2-6 overall record, missing out on the NCAA Division III Tournament for the first time since 2018 after Co-Champion University of Puget Sound earned the league’s automatic bid on tiebreakers. Defense was a hallmark of last year’s squad, collecting 13 shutouts and allowing just seven goals all season, including just three during conference play. Even more impressive was the team conceding just one goal over the final nine games of the year.

But despite the dominance of 2025, the 2026 team comes into the year with several question marks after graduating five of its six All-Conference players.

We have a lot of newness and we need to turn newness into teamness. There’s obviously very big positions (to fill) within the team in terms of goalkeeping and center backs, but we like who we have and it’s their time to step up and do well.

But that’s going to happen. You’re going to graduate good players and we always say we don’t want to just have a great season but a great program, and so players have to step up. It’s not the first time we’ve done it and it won’t be the last.

Head Coach Seth Spidahl

A Lute alum, Spidahl enters his 14th season on the sidelines and sits eight wins shy of becoming just the second Lute women’s soccer coach to eclipse 200 career wins. Spidahl would be joining Hall of Fame Coach Colleen Hacker who tallied 233 wins and three NAIA championships from 1981-1995 before stepping down and working with the United States Women’s National Team.

We have a sense of gratitude and humility, and I preach all the time we’re not owed anything. We don’t have to do this, we get to do this. We’re 0-0. The past was great but it doesn’t mean anything for the future other than that we know we can do this.

We try and define each journey as its own unique deal and we never take winning for granted. It starts with recruiting. It starts with how we train in spring. It starts with what the players do on their own in the summer, and we’ve been lucky to have a good consistent foundation that’s built and built and built. It does get harder every year but we’re going fight hard to never let it stop.

2026 PLU Women's Soccer Roster

Arguably one of the biggest holes to fill will be the graduation of First Team All-Conference and CSC Academic All-American goalkeeper Abby Winkler who had a minuscule 0.36 goals against average last fall. Mia Speir has been tabbed as the new starter between the posts. A junior from Spokane, Washington, Speir will be seeing her first collegiate varsity action this fall.

But despite the inexperience in counting games, Speir has been more than up to the task in the team’s spring exhibition against Division II Western Washington University and in the team’s two preseason exhibitions in August.

Mia's our starter. She’s been training great, she’s a very good goalkeeper, and a great person. She played at a high level of youth soccer for the Spokane Shadow so she’s ready, it’s her time. The one thing she lacks is experience (at the college level) in actual games but she played against Western Washington in the spring which we tied and she played both exhibitions this fall. We’re going to get her experience as quickly as we can.

Behind Speir will be a pair of first-years battling for the backup role between Molly Millar and Emily Meigs. Millar joins the Lutes from Huntington, Pennsylvania while Meigs hails from Eugene, Oregon and Marist Catholic High School.

Battling for the starting center back positions will be Keara Saks, Sophie Avery, and Madison Norton. A junior from Gresham, Oregon, Saks played in six games last fall while Avery, a senior from Bonney Lake, Washington, saw action in three games. Madison Norton is the newcomer of the bunch, a first-year coming from Wenatchee, Washington.

They’re getting better. Keara and Sophie played together for a shutout of Western in the spring and we got a shutout this past weekend against Northwest. It’s not the finished product, we have a lot of work to do, but they’re good coachable players and have a teachable spirit. I’m confident we can get it right, we’ve always had good central defending, that’s the foundation of the house.

Returning with experience to help the center backs will be senior defenders Jaden Saucelo and Joslyn Kruse. A Brentwood, California native, Saucelo played in 19 of the team’s 20 games last fall while Kruse, an Olympia, Washington native, was one of the heavy lifters on defense last year, starting all 20 games and finishing fourth among field players in minutes played in 2025.

“Joslyn and Jaden are two captains who are starters for us and played a lot. They’re both performing really well right now and we need that.”

Puyallup, Washington sophomore Sydney Bonds also looks to be in the mix for a defense that continues to pride itself on giving opposing teams very few looks at goal.

While there’s some flux in the defensive side of the ball, the Lutes look stacked in the midfield, returning several key starters from last year’s NWC title winning squad.

Our midfield is probably our strongest part of our team, returning three seniors in Liv Olson, Kelen Betts, and Lyla Merte. They all started last year and have played a ton of minutes over their four years.

Anchoring the midfield is the squad’s third captain and lone returning All-Conference player in Liv Olson. A First Team selection last fall, the Spokane, Washington native scored 10 goals for the Lutes with five of those strikes being game-winning goals.

“For me Liv is not our only heart-and-soul player but she’s a big piece of the heart— the right ventricle. Competitive. Hard worker. Two-year captain. She really emerged last year as a 10. The year before she played more of an 8. She scored a lot on set pieces and is a huge piece in a lot of ways on what we do on and off the field. I just love her competitive spirit and she holds people accountable.”

A West Linn, Oregon native, Kelen Betts returns after starting all 20 games last fall as does Lyla Merte (Auburn, Washington) who is one of just four players to start every game in 2025. In addition to the returning starters, the Lutes will rely on junior Hailey Glenn and sophomore Marie Piho. A Richland, Washington native, Glenn played in three games last year while Piho, a Kapolei, Hawaii native, appeared off the bench in 18 games.

Adding new blood to the midfield will be first-years Cidney Tawney from Missoula, Montana and Zienna Black from Portland, Oregon.

Kelan Betts in season finale against Whitman

We have good depth there. We have to figure out the combinations but very good in the midfield.

Up front, the Lutes return forwards Zoe Markquart, Tia Schwetz, Kaitlyn Lemus, and Kyleigh Archer in the wide areas.

“We need players like Tia and Kaitlin who are good players, to emerge and not be support players. They need to be THE player and the spotlight is on them now and they need to step up as juniors and seniors.”

Markquart enters her senior campaign having played all 20 games last season, starting in nine of those games and scoring one goal and one assist. Schwetz played in 18 games, starting three. The junior from Mill Creek, Washington scored a pair of game winners last fall at the expense of Lewis & Clark College and George Fox University on consecutive days.

Lemus tallied one assist in 2025 and played in 11 games while Archer, the 2025 NWC Triple Jump Champion, saw action in 10 games last fall.

Kyleigh has had a great camp. She hasn’t played much in her three years but she’s really put together a good two weeks in her senior year and we’re excited about that. She’s a two sport athlete, a great jumper and that’s finally translating into an impact on the soccer field and she’s off to a great start.

On the attack, the Lutes look to replace two All-Conference scorers who combined for five goals and 11 assists in Kiana Gutierrez and Olivia Boehm. Picking up the mantle for the Lutes will be Honolulu, Hawaii sophomore Taylor Thomas, Fife, Washington senior Abby Manolovitz, Lynden, Washington senior Megan Sloane, and Issaquah, Washington junior Kami Novotny. First-year Elayna Blodgett from Selah, Washington also factors into the mix for the Lutes.

We have a lot of nines. It’s a competition and we need to give people opportunities. It’s about who looks like they’re going to score and who’s goal dangerous and that’s also a piece of the team that we need to keep working at.

The Lutes have 11 first-years on the team in 2026, and while it’s hard to break into the starting lineup of a championship squad, Spidahl has his eyes on a few newcomers who could make an impact this fall.

We always tell them it should be hard to step in as a first year and make an impact and they’re going through the journey that most of our older players had to go through. But we really like our freshman class. We have two goalkeepers, Molly and Emily, who are battling for the No. 2 spot. We don’t really know yet who that’s going to be. We have some reserve games that will give both a chance to play so we can make some decisions.

Elayna has been great up front. Her twin sister Sophie will be a good outside back for us. Both very athletic players. Cidney will be good for us in the midfield at some point.

PLU plays four non-conference games before embarking on the 16-game conference slate, and will need to hit the ground running as they face some of the top teams in NCAA Division III.

Our North Star is to try and be a nationally top 25 competitive team while providing a unique student-athlete experience. And that’s measurable. For us to be that sort of team we have to play those sort of teams and in our geography that means hopping on an airplane and playing the Case Westerns of the World.

This scheduling fits our philosophy in terms of what we’re trying to be. We’re also bringing up Wheaton which is a perennially strong program and Azusa Pacific which was a Sweet 16 Division II program that’s transitioning to Division III that’s going to be really good.

Last year we played Trinity, Pomona, and Cal Lu. All three were playoff teams. That prepared us for an undefeated NWC run, so we look at non-conference as a way to get us ready. We want to win, but we know that what we do in conference determines what we play for at the end, so we need tough games.

What we do, its intentional. It’s meant to be hard, plus I think that the unique student-athlete experience comes when you’re flying to Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of our kids have never been there. We have this big old country, it’s really fun and I think a good learning experience for our players to go to these other environments and play teams and programs from other areas of the country.

2026 PLU Women's Soccer Schedule