The three-time America East champion University of Maine women’s soccer team has continued to capitalize on the NCAA Division I transfer portal by bringing in two mid-year transfer forwards from Oklahoma State and the University of Connecticut.
Transfers have been a major reason the Black Bears have gone from a team that hadn’t played in an America East championship game since 2010 to a back-to-back-to-back champion the past three seasons.
Several years in between, the Black Bears failed to qualify for the tournament.
“The transfer portal has transformed our team and our success,” said UMaine head coach Scott Atherley. “One, because of the talent. Second, they have been impactful almost immediately.”
And now, the team is adding two more players through the portal.
Sandrine Brault from Notre Dame des Prairies, Quebec is a winger who had an assist in 15 games as a freshman at Oklahoma State. Center forward and Springfield, Mass. native Isabella Meadows appeared in seven games over two seasons at UConn. Meadows can also play on the wing, according to Atherley.
“Both are really going to help us and impact us,” Atherley said about the newest transfers. “Bella is a real natural goal scorer. She is really athletic.
“She is great with her back to the goal. She can hold the ball which allows you to connect to the rest of your team. But she’s also a real threat with her speed to get in behind. She loves to go at the goal,” Atherley added.
Meadows, a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, played a career-high 27 minutes in a 3-1 win over UMaine this past fall and had a shot on goal.
“She was really dangerous,” said Atherley, who noted that prior to attending UConn, Meadows scored a lot of goals for her NEFC club team and Pope Francis Preparatory School squad.
Her NEFC team won the national title in 2021 and she scored 174 goals and had 48 assists in four years at Pope Francis Preparatory School, leading it to two Western Mass. titles while she earned a number of individual awards.
Atherley called Brault a “really tricky” player on the wing.
“She has great speed. She’s like a more refined Jordane Pinette,” said Atherley, comparing her to his senior winger who shared the team scoring lead this season and was an All-America East second team selection two years ago.
He also noted that Brault has played with the Canadian national team at the youth level.
“She is really dangerous one-on-one. She can run at you, get behind you and also serve balls into the box,” Atherley said.
This past year’s team had four transfers on defense in Rebecca Grisdale and Amanda Clauzel (both from Memphis), Hilary Washington (Baylor) and Meghan Bernetti (Campbell).
The 2023 and ‘24 teams had All-America East selections in Central Connecticut State transfer Kristina Kelly from Lincolnville and Lara Kirkby (Oregon) and, in 2024, transfers Anna Phillips (Oregon) and Emma Schneider (Florida Gulf Coast) were also All-America East picks.
The goalkeeper for the 2024 team was West Virginia transfer Jessica Kasacek.
“They have also brought in a perspective. They bring in the best qualities from their former place but they also think about things that they appreciate about here that they can articulate to the people that you have here,” Atherley said about the program’s transfer players. “To go through the portal is a really bold move. To step out to a new place and a new environment takes a lot of courage.”
There are a lot of things that go into landing transfers. First of all, it’s checking out various platforms to see who has entered the portal.
“Then we take a look at, are there Canadians in the portal,” said Atherley, who usually has at least six Canadians on his roster and had nine this past fall.
The UMaine program also takes a look at players in the portal who may be connected to current roster members, like if they played together at a previous institution, or have a connection through family or friendships.
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Atherley said. “There’s no exact science to it.”
Atherley, who is in his 27th year as the head women’s soccer coach at UMaine, said in addition to his two transfers, the team will have a talented incoming class of freshmen thanks in part to the New Balance Soccer Complex which debuted this past Oct. 2.
That facility has been a “game-changer” in recruiting as well as the program’s three consecutive conference titles, Atherley said.