After completing the longest regular season road trip in program history with five consecutive away games, the Illinois soccer team returns to the Illinois Soccer and Track Stadium this weekend.

The Illini (6-4-1) will face Indiana (5-5-1) on Friday and Purdue (3-7-2) on Sunday. After losing to Ohio State and Penn State over the weekend, head coach Janet Rayfield believes the Orange and Blue put up a fight, though the outcome didn’t show it.

“It was really a tough weekend for us from a result standpoint,” Rayfield said. “The difficult thing about it is we played some of our best soccer this weekend. Especially in the second half of Ohio State and probably the first 25 minutes of Penn State was some of the best soccer that we have played. Unfortunately we didn’t take advantage of that in terms of putting balls in the back of the net.”

Despite the two conference matches this weekend, senior Julie Ewing and the Illini have had their focus elsewhere.

“We are concentrating more on ourselves and getting what we need to be doing down pat,” Ewing said. “There are always adjustments or things that you will have to know about the other team in order to handle them the best that we can.”

Last season Illinois came away with victories against both Indiana and Purdue. Absent from those games was redshirt sophomore Jannelle Flaws, who missed last season after a knee injury but has been able to find the back of the net this season twice. Her most recent goal came Friday against Ohio State.

“Hopefully it will pay off and I will keep finding myself in opportunities to score and then put them in the back of the net,” Flaws said. “The good thing about my goal at Ohio State was that I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it — it was more instinct. When I think about it in games it kind of throws me off, sometimes a little too much, but hopefully I will just be able to put the chances we are creating in the net.”

The Illini are happy to be back at home and look forward to playing in front of all their fans after the road stretch.

“It’s a whole different emotional thing when you get to go out on your field and play and compete, and we are certainly looking forward to that because it has been awhile,” Rayfield said.

With Illinois facing two conference foes, Rayfield doesn’t want her team to change the way it’s been playing, she just wants the offense to capitalize on its scoring chances.

“It is going to be a battle,” Rayfield said. “You look across the scores and every game is a one-goal game, and every team has not given up a lot of goals. We are really focused on Friday night against Indiana and what we need to do to make sure we finish the opportunities we create and what we need to do to make sure that we don’t give them opportunities that they don’t earn — and they can earn some. We are going to have to defend well and attack well, and that doesn’t change from week to week.

“Any Big Ten team has the ability to beat you on any given day if you don’t bring your A-game to the table, and we are going to try and bring our A-game every Friday, every Sunday, every Saturday — whatever day we play we have to do that in the Big Ten season.”