After handing out each individual Big East championship trophy to her players in Manley Field House Saturday, Ange Bradley finally had the opportunity to get the point across. With her first real chance to address the program’s fans at the end of a long and arduous regular season, Bradley chose her opening words carefully.

The head coach could have used those first few seconds to reflect on the day’s dominating effort in a 6-1 victory over Rutgers. She could have even reflected on the team’s eight wins against Top 20 teams over the course of the season.

Instead, Bradley made sure the fans and her team knew exactly how she felt about where the program is at this point in time. In the coach’s mind, even though the team finished the year undefeated in conference play, the true season hasn’t begun.

‘Our season is just beginning,’ Bradley said to the crowd as she began to hoist the Big East championship trophy. ‘Some may think it is coming to an end, but it’s just the start.’

With that, the coach erased any real feeling of ultimate accomplishment from anyone’s mind. The team and Bradley know there is much more to accomplish this season. More than the Kristin Girouard-led dominating victory over a winless Big East foe in Rutgers (2-16, 0-6 Big East) — Girouard scored two goals on the day to lead the team.

Twenty-minutes earlier, perhaps the modest celebration had to do with exhaustion, or the torrential downpour they had just played in.

But for Syracuse’s leading scorer, junior forward Lindsey Conrad, the lack of real celebration came as no surprise. This is in fact an Orange team (16-2, 6-0) that has dominated the Big East conference since the beginning of the 2008 season, compiling a 13-1 record, two regular season titles and a tournament championship over that period. For Conrad, it was just another example reaffirming SU’s place at the top of the Big East, and consequently, the victory served more as deliverance.

‘Well it definitely sets us apart from everyone else in the conference, its something Ange has never done here,’ Conrad said. ‘With the undisputed title people just know that we worked really hard for this. We earned it and now we are showing it. I think it was more of a release.’

Bradley, however, doesn’t want the team’s low-key response to the victory to get in the way of what she feels has been a tremendous in-conference season. A stretch of performances the coach is satisfied with.

The Orange did, after all, not lose a single game to a Big East team all season, a result she admits she wasn’t anticipating two months ago

‘I don’t think that we thought we could have done this at the beginning of the year,’ Bradley said. ‘I mean this was one of our goals; we created opportunities for ourselves to play for a championship.’

It is that simple thought of achieving certain goals from a team standpoint that attests to the facet of the squad Bradley thinks has progressed the most. She feels the Orange has grown the most with regards to sheer confidence, the final denominator the team will lean on and need to have moving forward.

‘This team will always surprise you, and I will never ever doubt this team,’ Bradley said. ‘They have confidence, a lot more confidence. They play with confidence, and there is definitely a stronger belief in what they can do.’

Essentially, they are there physically. Bradley knows this crop of players can stick with anyone; the speed and skills are there.

The only question is if mentally, but more important spiritually, will they keep with it. They have so far, and heading into the Big East tournament, as the No. 1 seed with a bulls-eye on its back, Syracuse will need to maintain it’s current spirit on the field.

It’s the only solution to the challenges that await them now that the season has ‘officially begun’.

‘It’s really about being spiritually ready and feeling good about what you are doing,’ Bradley said. ‘We all have that flame inside of us burning bright. And if there is any type of self doubt we have to fix it. But yeah, I feel we are (spiritually) pretty good.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on November 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm