The Norwalk girls soccer team opens the 2025 season on Monday night, hosting the ADM Tigers at 7:00 p.m.

The Warriors enter the regular season with a roster of 21 players, including six seniors and several returning starters from last year’s 14-5 campaign. The 2024 season ended with a disappointing PK shootout loss to Lewis Central in the Class 2A regional finals.

Norwalk head coach Andrew Messer tells KNIA Sports that the Warriors are coming along nicely as a team in preseason practices and ready to erase the bad taste of last year’s final game. Messer says that the team has some new spots to fill, particularly on defense, but he loves the chemistry that they are showing on and off the field.

“We’re really coming together as a team, almost like a family,” he said. “This year, it just seems like we’re getting along really, really well. Even when they’re together for open gyms, when they’re together for things that are not as intense, they’re acting like they’re sisters. They’re making fun of each other, but not in a negative kind of way. They’re loving each other, they’re making sure that they know that each other exists, and just doing the things that I think a great team needs to have on the outside of the field. So I’m really, really pumped to see what they bring when we get started.”

Some of Norwalk’s top returning players include seniors Braelyn Clark and Maya Butler, and juniors Addy Wood, Avery Drymon, Tatum Miller, Pearl Brown, Paige Nichols, Katie Liedtke and Olivia Welch. Clark, who has led the team in scoring the last two years, finished 2024 with 21 goals and 13 assists. She will start the season sidelined by injury but will be playing the role of team captain. Wood tallied nine goals and four assists last year while Drymon and Miller both scored four goals. Liedtke enters her third year as the Warriors’ starting goalie with 140 career saves.

Coach Messer believes the team will have a balanced scoring attack this season – a strength he hopes will make them difficult to defend.