STONY BROOK, N.Y. – The 2019-20 athletic calendar year begins Thursday night, when the Stony Brook women's soccer team plays host to Northeastern at LaValle Stadium. It will also be the first game as a head coach for Tobias Bischof, who joined the Seawolves in December.

Seawolves Notes

• The Seawolves are coming off a 6-1-1 league record in the 2018 campaign, earning the America East Regular Season title on the season's final day.
• Their overall record finished at 11-7-1 with wins at Oregon State and Seton Hall in the first month of the year.
• The team returns eight of its nine leading scorers from a season ago, with junior Alyssa Francese (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) atop the returners' leaderboard with 19 points.
• Classmates Fanny Gotesson (Varnamo, Sweden) and Chelsie DePonte (Honolulu, Hawaii) also return after double-figure point campaigns with 11 apiece.
• The 2018 America East Goalkeeper of the Year is back for her junior campaign, with Sofia Manner (Helsinki, Finland) slated to be between the posts this year. 

The Series

• The only meeting between the schools in the last 15 years came in 2017, when Northeastern won a 1-0 bout in Boston, Mass.
• This is the first time the Huskies are making the trip to Long Island since 2002, a 1-1 draw between the schools.

Scouting Northeastern

• The Huskies are coming off a 10-9-1 campaign a season ago in which they split their games away from home (5-5-0) and won seven of their nine league contests.
• They qualified as the No. 2 seed in the 2018 CAA Women's Soccer Championship, dropping a semifinal match with Hofstra 1-0.
• Northeastern was picked as the third-best team in the Colonial this season, behind league champs Hofstra and runners-up James Madison.
• They are led by CAA Preseason Defensive Player of the Year Julianne Ross. Her fellow junior defender, Mikenna McManus, was selected to the Preseason All-CAA Team.

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