The women's soccer team played its first of six spring exhibition matches Feb. 27, beating the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers.
Auburn won 6-0 with goals coming from five different players.
While the regular season for the Tigers is the fall, they are allowed a spring season to train and develop players.
The spring season does not count toward NCAA standings.
Head Coach Karen Hoppa said the seniors usually don't come out and play, so the spring is truly preparation for next fall.
"Our goal is to improve upon the things we did last fall, so to speak," Hoppa said.
Hoppa said in the spring they will work to develop the players' skills, getting better as individual soccer players and also trying to improve as a team.
"What we really want to try to focus on this spring is more productive offensively," Hoppa said. "We felt like we didn't score enough goals. Our objective this spring is to be a goal-scoring team."
Defensively, Julie King, junior defender, said they have been working extensively on the organizational part.
"We lost Sammy Towne this year," King said. "She was the leader in the back, so now we have to figure out how to organize ourselves without her, and a lot of people stepped up today."
A big test for the Tigers this spring will be playing the Atlanta Beat, a professional women's soccer team from Atlanta, Ga.
The Tigers will face the Beat twice, March 9 and April 3.
"We have played them before, and it's always such a good learning experience because the other team is professional, more sophisticated, and they really take advantage of our mistakes and force us to be on our game," Hoppa said.
Katy Frierson, junior midfielder, said the Beat will be challenging for the team and will force them to think a lot faster and to think ahead.
"Those girls are the next level in athletics," Frierson said. "They are very savvy soccer-wise, so it's going to be a pretty big challenge for us I think."
Defensively, the Beat will provide Auburn its biggest challenge too.
King said the Beat has a lot of talent and experience on their team and will be organized.
"I think personally we need to go out there with knowing that it's going to be a challenge for us," King said. "Go out there and be organized and play to our best ability, and hopefully everybody will step up that day, and we will do good again."
Coming up are two home matches March 5 and 9 against West Florida and Atlanta Beat, respectively. The games will be played at the Auburn University Soccer Complex, and both will start at 6 p.m.
Auburn will then travel to Birmingham to play the Beat April 3 and then to Kennesaw, Ga., April 9. In Kennesaw, the team will have a double-header against Columbus State and Kennesaw State.
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