Great end to our season!

The last few weeks have been exciting for the Mustangs! We beat Elizabethtown in the conference semi-finals in PK's. Allison Johnson saved three penalty kicks to help us advance to the conference finals versus Messiah. After a long, hard game on Friday night we headed to Messiah Sunday for the conference championship. While we came up short, we were still happy to have made it that far our first year in the MAC.

Unfortunately, we missed out on an at large bid to the NCAA tournament but we were the number 1 seed in the ECAC South bracket. We hosted Saint Vincent on Wednesday in the first round and defeated them 4-0 to move on to the semi finals. Although we were the first seed, we were unable to host and travelled to Swarthmore on Saturday to face Lebanon Valley again. The first time we played LVC we fought back from a 1-0 deficit to win 2-1. We played one of our best games on the season and won 2-0. Host school Swarthmore lost to Wilkes in penalty kicks which meant Sunday we would play Wilkes for the championship. We went down 1-0 in the first half versus Wilkes and we fought back to tie it off a Jamie Matlock goal. In the first overtime we got a corner and Shannon McGuire found Kayla Curry's head to end the game. Kayla and Taylor Zimmerman were able to end their stellar career at Stevenson University with an ECAC championship. Kayla Curry was also named tournament MVP.

The Mustangs had 7 players make All-Conference teams. Allison Johnson and Allie Ondrecjak represented the Mustangs on the first team, Jennifer Simkin, Taylor Zimmerman, Jamie Matlock, and Mackenzie Calhoun made second team, while Meaghan Williams was named to honorable mention.

We had a very successful year and we are looking forward to our spring season!

PLAY OFFS!

This week we moved up in the Regional Rankings to number 5! This is the last time rankings will be posted before the NCAA tournament field is announced! Friday night we host Elizabethtown in the MAC semi-finals at 7:30pm. The last time we met was October 16 and we battled 110 minutes to a 1-1 tie. Since the tie with E-Town, we have found the back of the net 15 times in 3 games. And after our loss to Messiah on September 29th, we have gone on an 8 game streak with out losing. We feel that we are ready to take on E-Town and advance to the conference championship!

If you are in the area, we would love to see you in the stands Friday night! This is a huge game and the more support from our friends and family, the better it will be!

Strong Conference Play

This week we host our last two regular season games in the MAC. Wednesday we play Hood at 7pm and on Saturday we have Alvernia at 1pm. Over the last few weeks, we have accomplished a lot as a team. Every Monday we set goals for the defenders, midfielders, forwards, and overall team. This helps us to gauge ourselves in ways other than just wins and losses. It also helps us to focus on areas that need improving and to keep getting better week after week.

At the beginning of the season we set goals for statistics during each game. A few of these include greater than 50% of our shots being on goal, not giving away more than 2 corner kicks, and aiming for shut outs each game. We keep these on a board in our locker room so that we know what we need to achieve to help win every game. These have also helped us realize that we can accomplish all of our goals and we have the capability to do amazing things with SU Soccer!

The first week in the MAC we had the conference offensive player of the week with Jamie Matlock and twice this month goalie Allison Johnson has represented Stevenson with defensive player of the week. Allie, a freshman from New Jersey, leads the conference in save percentages and goals against average. We have also climbed up to number 6 in the MidAtlantic Regional rankings.
http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d3/regional_rankings
We are energized and ready to take on the rest of the MAC and continue into post season play!

2012 Mustangs

With our season half way over SU Women's Soccer is 1-1 in the MAC and 7-4 overall. After a solid start to the season we had a rough week losing to then ranked number 6 in the country, Johns Hopkins and regionally ranked Rowan. We bounced back with 2 wins against Catholic and an undefeated Frostburg State. The following week proved to be a tough one for us as well with an overtime loss in the 110th minute to Salisbury off a PK and a loss to defending National Champions Messiah. However, we are off to a solid start for this week and the rest of conference play. Winning 2-1 over Lebanon Valley gave us the spark we need to continue being successful for the rest of our season.
We have accomplished so much this season already! 17 players have tallied points for the Mustangs with a total of 13 players scoring goals! Jamie Matlock was conference Player of the Week our first week of the season and also our first in the MAC. Matlock’s goal against Frostburg was her 9th game winner and 17th career goal.
This year our team is determined to fight for a spot in the NCAA tournament. With a strong schedule and solid conference we are competing with some of the best teams in the country. We are a talented team that believe in ourselves and our ability and will continue working until we meet all of our goals!

Baltimore Child Abuse Center

Our 2011 season was dedicated to the BCAC (Balimore Child Abuse Center). The girls wore blue shoelaces and wrote BCAC on their wrists each game to remind them who they were playing for. Now that the season is finished, the grand total of money the girls earned for this wonderful cause is $3,048. It is estimated that 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys will be sexually abused in their lifetime making this an extremley important cause that the girls wanted to pursue. Along with raising this money, every week the players took turns going to the center to play with children, clean the center, organize paperwork or whatever the center needed that particular day. Jennifer Noparstak, MSW, Director of Development for the BCAC said "We are so appreciative of the Stevenson University women's soccer team's help throughout their 2011 season, in addition to assisting BCAC in raising awareness and funds, the players are volunteering their time weekly, spending a few hours with children at the Center and providing them a sense of security and caring." I am so very proud of my girls. Senior and Junior Captains Stephanie Eyler and Taylor Zimmerman came up with this idea completely on their own, organized everything and truly did our community a service.

Road to ECAC's

With our strength of schedule and winning record we were certain our season was not over. We took the weekend off to mourn our loss and then got immediately back into the swing of soccer having a couple fun, hard working practices. Turns out we were ONE TEAM AWAY from getting a bid to NCAA's however since we did not get in to the NCAA's we were asked to compete in the ECAC's. We were the second seed in this tournament meaning Neumann traveled to us. The girls took care of business scoring 7 goals (frustration from not scoring enough against St. Mary's I'm sure)! Then we traveled to Frostburg where we won an intense battle against a future MAC rival Albright. It was an extremely physical game that we ended up winning 1 -0. We stayed overnight in a hotel where the girls had way to much fun competing in Graeme's "Pub Quiz" (which he stayed up until 2 am creating the world's hardest trivia questions). Dinner was delicious and everyone was in excellent spirits as they sang their way onto the field Sunday for the Championship game. Story of our lives however, we dominate, out shoot, and lose. We outshot Frostburg 21 - 14 and had 5 corner kicks to 0. We hit the cross bar THREE TIMES and just could not catch a break. They scored a beauty in the first half, and if you can't finish you can't win so we ended our season with a 1-0 loss. Again, we were extremely proud of ourselves and we walked away knowing if we get better at finishing our opportunities we are UNSTOPPABLE.

CAC Let Down.

Unfortunately we lost a tough CAC semi-final game against St. Marys. Both teams fought hard and St. Mary's was able to capitalize to take the win. They are exceptionally well in transition and we broke down defensively twice letting them score 2 goals. They scored first early into the game and Jamie Matlock scored before the half taking us into the locker room tied at 1-1. We had 27 shots on goal and only score once, almost unbelievable. They had 7 shots on goal and finished 2. Heartbreaking as it is, that is the game of soccer that we love so much. St. Mary's went to Salisbury and lost in OT. Making Salisbury the CAC Champs. Much to our disappointment, we let our repeat championship slip away. However, all in all the girls did have an excellent and extremely fun season and I am very proud of their work both on and off the field.