Today marks the official start of 2024-25 Notre Dame athletics
As it does this time every summer, the next athletics year at Notre Dame again arrived fast and will officially open tonight when Michigan State comes to campus to open the Irish women’s soccer regular season at Alumni Stadium.
With the long-running success of his program, Notre Dame head coach Nate Norman refuses to call 2024 a rebuilding season.
Instead, he prefers to call it a “reload,” and fittingly so.
Following a fine 2023 season that saw Notre Dame finish 12-4-4 overall, second in the ACC at 7-1-2, and with a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Championship, the Irish graduated 12 players overall and three of its top-four scorers from that team, leaving Norman with 13 true freshmen on his 2024 roster.
And, the seventh-year Irish skipper expects to start at least four members of that No. 3 ranked 2024 recruiting class.
“We’re very young, so there will be adversity,” Norman said. “But when those tough times come, not only do we need to get through them, we need to grow from them as well.”
Trying to rebound
After a terrific regular season in 2023, the Irish slipped some in the postseason and lost their first match of the ACC Championship to Clemson, then prematurely bowed out of the NCAA Championship in the round of 32.
The 2023 postseason tarnished a terrific regular season that saw Notre Dame hover around a national top-5 ranking most of the year.
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And now with a youthful and new-look roster, improving post-season results becomes a season-long challenge for Norman, though not an easy one as he charts his course with the preseason No. 15 Irish.
“That’s going to be a big piece,” Norman explained, “making sure that they can focus and be resilient and not let the rigors of the season affect them negatively. And hopefully, not only get through those challenges and adversity but also to use those times to learn and grow.”
Even with heavy roster turnover, the ACC coaches still picked Notre Dame to finish third in the conference this season.
The league will be loaded, as usual. Defending national champion Florida State is picked to win the ACC again, and newcomer Stanford — which lost to FSU in the national title game last year — is picked to finish second. Clemson was also a final four participant last year.
“For us, we have a culture on our team and we have expectations that we want to compete for national championships and ACC Championships,” Norman said. “We expect to step on the field and compete and win every game that we play no matter who it is.”
Fortunately, or unfortunately — however you want to look at it — Notre Dame plays neither Florida State nor Clemson during the regular season. Though, the Irish will host Stanford at Alumni Stadium on Oct. 20.
