The women’s soccer team wants to win the Mid-American Conference championship trophy, but each week, certain players hope to have possession of a different, less flattering trophy.

In his first season at the University, coach Andy Richards not only led the women’s soccer team to a successful season, but he also created the Challenge Trophy.

Richards goes to Home Depot every year and buys some wood and constructs an off-center, rhombus-shaped tower, which becomes so much more than just a hodgepodge of wood juxtaposed together by season’s end

‘It’s unfinished,’ Richards said. ‘I wanted to create something that assembles to be kind of a trophy.’

He lugs this wooden emblem to the practice every week and divides the team into three separate squads. During practice, the three squads participate in a variety of different skill drills, activities, technique drills and scrimmages to score points.

At the end of the week, Richards awards the winning squad the Challenge Trophy. By winning this trophy, the team gets to decorate a section of it, making the trophy more personal every week for the team.

The winner from the three squads – this season called Brownchickenbrowncow, the Gaffers and the Mellow Yellow Pebbles – don’t have to pick up cones or carry equipment the next week of practice either.

Richards knows that the women pick goofy names because they love hearing him call them out during practice. But what it also does is bring much more focus and competitive spirit to the practices, taking away from the mundane routines.

And it’s not just on-the-fly decorating. Players have already thought up what they want to decorate the trophy with.

‘I want to decorate it with a huge flag coming out of the top of it saying, ‘Bow chicka wow wow,” sophomore Alyssa Zuccaro said.

Some of the decorations already on the trophy include cow stickers, a piggy bank and a variety of colorful paints put on by the junior midfielder Katie Stephenson and the Brownchickenbrowncow team.

‘It is a great way to create a competitive spirit within the team,’ Stephenson said. ‘We take that competitive environment we create at practice during the week and use that to prepare and motivate us for our games on the weekend.’

And all of the players agree that it’s a great way to pull the team together and boost up the competitive spirit.

‘I definitely think that the Challenge Trophy raises team morale and competitive spirit. It allows you to connect with a smaller group of girls while trying to win every week,’ junior midfielder Alicia Almond said. ‘Also, at times it gets so competitive that people refuse to clap for the other teams when they lose … but we make them anyway, because it is all in good fun. Competing, working hard and having fun are three principles that coach Richards and BGSU women’s soccer have always valued and still do today.’

The wooden trophy has certainly become something special for the team, as it symbolizes their season by starting off plain before becoming something special.

‘It’s like when you build a garden shed. First you need to build the shed, then add the roof, paint it, etc.,’ Richards said. ‘Or when you bake a cake. You have to bake the cake, add the frosting [and] light the candles for it to be complete.’

And that’s just like his Challenge Trophy. It starts off just a messy fusion of wood and amateur craftsmanship, but ends up turning into something epic that represents the team from the inside out.

‘To think, all of this stems from a trophy made from scrap wood,’ Almond said. ‘From what I’ve heard, no other sports program does something like this. It’s a unique and special part of the BGSU women’s soccer program and something for coach Richards.”