Ohio has spent the first portion of its 2023 season facing off against nonconference opponents in a buildup to Mid-American Conference play. In the 2023 season so far, the Bobcats have gone 2-3-2. Through these nonconference matchups, Ohio has been challenged by some established programs. While there have been some unfortunate results, there have been exciting positives for the team.
One of those positives has been watching the growth of Ohio sophomore Scout Murray from her true freshman season in 2022.
Murray hails from Chicago, where she attended Lane Tech College Prep High School. While at Lane Tech, Murray earned an All-State team selection her junior year, where she recorded a 30-goal season. The dominance at the high school level allowed her to lead Lane Tech to the City Championship in 2019 and 2021.
While attending Lane Tech, Murray was also a part of the Chicago Sky junior team from 2016-2020 and Northbrook Eclipse in 2020.
According to Murray, she knew she had potential to play at the Division I level after conversations with Rodgers.
“My junior year I attended a camp here and I think I got noticed for my speed,” Murray said. “I had a conversation with Aaron (Rodgers), and he said that I ‘need to be playing for the top team and I need to get better, but we can see your potential.’ And so I had that in my mind leading up until coming here, just that I have the potential.”
The recruitment process found Murray choosing between attending a Division III school or attending Ohio University and competing with some of the top talent in the nation at a Division I school.
Murray talked about how adjusting to the high level of competition right out of high school presented challenges during her freshman year at OU. However, she also explained how acclimating to her new team throughout the year brought comfort and that her first year went as well as she hoped.
“I think it’s an adjustment for everyone to switch your mindset … I had a great experience and fell in love with the school and fell in love with the team, especially during spring,” Murray said. “That's when I felt super close with my team because we'd been together for so long, and that's when I started feeling comfortable playing and feeling confident. I would say my freshman year was probably one as good as I could have hoped for.”
With a solid freshman year under her belt, Murray had a lot of momentum going into her sophomore season with a larger role, but she explained how she didn’t want to set any major goals for herself and wanted to keep things simple.
“I didn’t set many goals or anything like that,” Murray said. “Having joy and playing the most confidently and the best that I can was my main goal this season.”
According to Murray, the beginning of the 2023 season has had many ups and downs. Murray is currently tied for the team lead in goals and points on the season. The overall defense has played well enough but Ohio’s offense hasn’t been able to produce many goals, keeping matches close.
“I think I have been challenged because we are playing such high-level teams that I am so focused on defending,” Murray said. “Just playing schools like JMU and Ohio State, those were big ones where we were really keeping up with them (on defense), but could just not score.”
However, despite an up-and-down beginning to the season, Murray was very expressive of how the mid-season break between nonconference games and MAC games has been used to Ohio’s benefit.
“Working with the forwards in the midfield and how we worked on specific events or just midfielders or just forwards, we have worked on how all of it fits together and how we can build an attack on that and then counter-defend,” Murray said. “We’ve been working specifically on that, and I don’t know, it just looks really good. It’s been a really good last 10 days.”
