By CHRIS COOK
LongwoodLancers.com

The green flag to Longwood's 2016-17 athletic calendar drops this Friday at 2 p.m. when the Lancer women's soccer team hosts Commonwealth rival VCU in a preseason exhibition game at the Longwood Athletics Complex, the university's first official athletics contest of the year.
 
It's fitting that the program led by Todd Dyer, the longest tenured of Longwood's 13 current head coaches, gets the honor of kicking off the university's 10th year as a Division I institution. Dyer, a 1993 Longwood graduate, former men's soccer player and founder of the Longwood women's soccer program, has established his team as one of the most successful on campus and possibly the next to bring a Big South Championship to Farmville.
 
The success Longwood women's soccer has accomplished since making the jump to Division I has been remarkably consistent, having never finished under .500 in any of the university's nine seasons of competition at the highest level of college sports. The Lancers have managed six winning seasons during that span, four of which featured double-digit wins, and two of which – 2012 and 2013 – resulted in back-to-back third-place finishes in their first two years in the Big South Conference.

That success has created lofty expectations, both internal and external, as Dyer's 2016 squad was picked to finish fourth in the Big South Preseason Coaches Poll. Dyer, always quick to downplay preseason predictions, sees his team's ceiling as higher than that in a parity-laden Big South that has seen the Lancers amass a 24-13-5 conference record and three top-five finishes since joining the league four years ago.
 
Spearheading the newest edition of the Lancers are seven returning starters, including senior midfielder and three-time All-Big South selection Amanda Spencer, a player Dyer ranks among the best he has ever coached. That's elite company for a coach who has held the reins of the Longwood program for 23 years and has guided it into the Division I era as seamlessly as any other program on campus, save for the three-time Big South Champion Longwood softball team. That program is one Dyer identifies as "the standard" for Longwood athletics and a level to which his team inches closer every year.
 
Much like head coach Kathy Riley's Longwood softball dynasty, the secret to Dyer's success is no secret at all. He has built his program on a foundation of quality in-state and regional recruits, bringing in not only talented, but disciplined players who thrive under the grinding, "blue collar" mentality Dyer and associate head coach Rich Stoneman demand of their team. The results on the field are equaled by those off the field, as Longwood women's soccer annually posts one of the top grade point averages in the athletics department, highlighted by back-to-back Cormier Awards for Team Academic Excellence for 2015-16.

When the Lancers take the field Friday, the 90 minutes between whistles will represent only a fraction of the work they've put in so far this offseason. They are traditionally the first team to report to campus in full, doing so on Aug. 2 this year to begin a grueling preseason camp that includes multiple training sessions per day.
 
That camp is as much refresher for the returning players as it is indoctrination for the newcomers. The training includes as much conditioning and weight training as it does soccer and is punctuated daily by notorious team-wide ice baths, the mere mention of which will send chills, literally, down the spine of any player who has ever endured a Longwood women's soccer preseason. But every element of the preseason grind, from the infamous "Green Mile" test to this year's USA Women's Soccer Olympic watch parties in the team lounge, brings the Lancers closer together as a team.
 
The camaraderie built by those shared experiences may be the most overlooked element of Longwood's success on the pitch. That cohesiveness the team has begun to develop in the preseason provides the foundation for what they will become in October and beyond, which, as history has shown, is quite a finished product.
 
For now, the Lancers will use Friday's preseason opener for what it is: a stage to assess their strengths and weaknesses in preparation for the start of the regular season, which begins with another home bout against Richmond on Aug. 19. But for the Lancer faithful, Friday's 2 p.m. showdown against the Rams signals something greater: the start of a new season, the lighting of a torch that Longwood athletics will keep burning from tomorrow through basketball season and into the baseball and softball postseason in May and beyond. Come watch the women's soccer team spark that fire Friday, and stay tuned all year long to see how big the flame can get.

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