CORPUS CHRISTI – The ACU women's soccer team made a little bit of athletics program history Wednesday afternoon against McNeese, and although it took them two overtime periods and a shootout to get it done, it's the Wildcats who are advancing to the semifinals of the Southland Conference Post-Season Tournament after a 5-3 win over the Cowgirls at Jack Dugan Stadium on the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi campus.
The win for the Wildcats is the first win for any ACU team in a Southland Conference post-season tournament as a full NCAA Division I member. The sixth-seeded Wildcats now advance to Friday's semifinals where they will take on No. 2 seed Stephen F. Austin at 4 p.m. for a trip to the tournament championship match on Sunday. SFA – which lost to ACU, 2-0, in Abilene on Oct. 22 – beat No. 7 seed Sam Houston State, 4-1, earlier Wednesday.
Megan Baer,
Michelle Mulrooney,
Christina Arteaga,
Chloe Fifer, and
Caity Acosta stepped to the line to go head to head with Cowgirls keeper Emma Roccaforte, the league's Goalkeeper of the Year. ACU and McNeese went back and forth through three rounds of the shootout before the Cowgirls' Morgan Middleton missed her shot, setting up Acosta to give ACU a chance to win the match. Acosta delivered, drilling a high shot into the middle of the net and sending ACU into the semifinals.
"That was a tough match," ACU head coach
Casey Wilson said. "Both team played hard all 110 minutes. Its satisfying to get a win like this for the ladies and the program. Now we need to regroup and focus on Friday's match against SFA."
ACU (8-10-1) had the best of the opening chances, with first team All-Conference forward
Dylan Owens leading a series of solo blistering runs through her offensive third. However, despite multiple threatening setups on both ends, neither team was able to find a breakthrough. The two sides entered halftime deadlocked at 0-0, each team only managing one shot on goal apiece.
The opening seconds after the intermission saw the most clear-cut scoring chance of the day to that point, with another run from Owens forcing a close-range low save from Roccaforte.
Another transition play from ACU as the game approached 36 minutes to play saw a shot from league Freshman of the Year
Christina Arteaga off of an Owens cross skirt just wide left of the net. With nearly 25 minutes to play, Owens again created a chance for sophomore Sam Vestal, whose shot nearly took a friendly deflection before Roccaforte scrambled to cover it.
The second half of the contest proved to be as much of a defensive effort for both sides as the first. A cross from Arteaga to Owens in the opening minute of the half looked to get the Wildcats on the board, but the junior couldn't get the ball across the line before Roccaforte grabbed the stop.
Acosta's kick in the 85
th minute curved just wide of the goal as the Albuquerque, N.M., native looked to put one on the board. Not even two minutes later Roccaforte knocked down Baer's final shot of regulation.
ACU goal keeper
Erin Smith got her fingers on the ball with 21 seconds left in regulation to grab her third save of the match to send the match into overtime. McNeese's trademark physical defense performed well to contain the speed of ACU's front line, but the Cowgirls missed much of their offensive firepower with the absence of Player of the Year Savannah LaRicci due to injury.
Arteaga put up two shots in the first overtime period as she looked to get the golden goal. Her first effort was stopped just short by Roccafforte as she blasted one from 25 yards out.
The Wildcat back line only allowed eight shots, and Smith snatched three saves.
