Chaminade women’s soccer to take Japan trip

On Sunday, the Chaminade University women’s soccer team is set to embark on a foreign tour to Japan, the first time the Silverswords have left the country as a team in program history.

“For 20 of the players, it’s the first time that they will travel internationally,” CUH women’s head coach Michelle Richardson said. “It was amazing. That means 20 kids got their passports for the very first time. That opens your mind to life, right? You realize that the world is so much bigger than just the things that you experience in front of you. It also provides them with an understanding that they can do amazing things.”

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The Silverswords will play a total of five matches, taking on both professional and collegiate teams.

Although NCAA teams are permitted to take a foreign tour every four years, funds still must be raised by teams. The trip was five years in the making for the Silverswords, who started fundraising efforts in 2019 and saw progress temporarily halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m pretty excited. We’ve been talking about this for since 2019, since my freshman year, and I never thought we’d be able to go. But this is the year that things are happening and I feel like we worked super hard fundraising over the past year and yeah, I’m super excited,” Silverswords defender Lindsey Wilson said.

When Chaminade returns from its trip, it will host Lincoln and Lewis & Clark for exhibitions in August before beginning its regular season at the Northwest Nazarene Tournament in Nampa, Idaho in early September.