Wisconsin Soccer Central

Just a few weeks after the spring semester ended, the UW-Green Bay women's soccer team is getting back together.

The Phoenix leave Tuesday for a nine-day trip to London that will feature three friendlies and a visit to Premier League club Chelsea FC and its training facilities. They will train each morning at Regent's Park, a 395-acre park in central London that includes more than 100 acres of sporting fields.

Green Bay will face a team from Luton Town Ladies FC and an all-star team from North London before closing out its schedule with a match against a team organized by Girl Scholar USA, a company that helps connect college coaches in the U.S. to female athletes in the United Kingdom and across the world.

Phoenix coach Trevor Warren, who is from northeast England near Newcastle, wrote in an email that the team also will visit historical sites such as the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. Green Bay players have spent the past two years raising funds for the trip.

• Defender Emily Scott, who started all 40 matches for the UW-Milwaukee women's team over the past two seasons, has transferred to Iowa. Meanwhile, the Panthers have added a transfer in defender Ashley Burkhardt (Madison Memorial) – she started all 19 games for NCAA Division III UW-Eau Claire as a freshman last fall.
• The natural grass field at Marquette's Valley Fields is being upgraded, the first major improvement for the field since the facility opened in 1993. A new irrigation system and base will be installed by Bush Turf, with turf grids made from fiberglass fibers put down to help stabilize sand and soil, improve drainage and reduce divots. Professional-grade, low-mow Kentucky bluegrass sod will be installed as the top layer of the project, which started last week. "Marquette is going to have one of the best playing surfaces in the country," Golden Eagles men's coach Louis Bennett said in a news release. "I think that speaks volumes as to the investment into the student-athletes' playing experience. Our style of play requires us to play on the floor, and playing on a great surface will allow us to do that."
• The Northern Athletics Conference is changing its name and will be known as the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference starting July 1. The new name is meant to avoid confusion with the North Atlantic Conference - both NCAA Division III conferences currently use the acronym NAC. With Maranatha Baptist leaving the league to become an independent, the NACC will have 11 teams for men's soccer this fall and 12 teams for women's soccer.