CMS Women's Soccer Gets New Lease on Life with NCAA Tournament Bid

CLAREMONT, Calif. - If you've ever watched an NCAA selection show, you've probably seen the visual of a team on the bubble gathered around in a big room, nervously watching to see if their school's name pops up on the screen, and then bursting out into a big cheer when they find out that they've gotten the invitation.

For the CMS women's soccer team, though, it was mostly fragmented into 30 or so little cheers all around the five colleges. 



The Athenas thought their season was over when they came up just short of reaching the SCIAC Tournament. It was a very top-heavy league this year, with a huge dropoff between fifth and sixth place, and with only four spots available for the league tournament, one of the top five would have to be left out. It turned out to be the Athenas, when they fell at Chapman 1-0 on Nov. 2 in a winner-take-all battle for the final spot, splitting the season series with the Panthers but ending up behind them in the final standings.

CMS had a strong season overall at 10-4-3, with two of the losses coming to No. 7 Pomona-Pitzer, but an NCAA bid seemed like a dream that was out of reach. Monday mornings are busy times around the Claremont Colleges, especially for student-athletes who load up on classes in the morning on non-gamedays, so there was never much thought given to breaking up the usual routine and gathering around a room only to be disappointed. 

Meanwhile, in an entirely different room, a different group of gathered people from the NCAA selection committee had a different opinion. That 10-4-3 record included some very impressive wins that resulted in some very high computer rankings. The Athenas knocked off Pacific Lutheran 1-0 back on Sept. 6, and the Lutes went on to win their next 15 games. CMS also took a 2-0 win over Illinois Wesleyan, which finished 14-5 and won its conference, and went 1-0-1 against a Cal Lutheran team that was selected as a tournament host (which is where CMS was sent to face Emory on Saturday night at 7:30). 

As a result, at approximately 10:20 a.m. Pacific time, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps did, in fact, indeed appear on the NCAA.com screen. And while the cheering was neither centralized nor immediate, it didn't take long at all for the mini-cheers to start erupting around Claremont. 

Senior midfielder Gabby Clouse wasn't in class at 10:20, but was at the Claremont McKenna student center (The Hub) studying between classes, when her phone started buzzing with the unexpected news. 

"When I heard the news, I actually felt completely numb," said Clouse. "I was with my friend and I just started screaming and we hugged each other. Right after that I actually ran into three more girls on my team, and we were all just cheering and hugging and everyone was looking at us. It was a really great moment."

For Clouse and the other four seniors on the Athenas (Sarah Tocher, Rhiann Holman, Hayden Craig, Kira Favakeh), the bid meant even more. They had spent the last nine days figuring the story of their collegiate soccer careers was over, and now suddenly, that book has at least one more chapter. And if CMS can defeat a tough Emory team that comes in at 13-4 with a six-game win streak, it will then play either a Cal Lutheran team it has played twice (earning a win and a tie) or a UC Santa Cruz team it tied on the road. Dreaming of turning this second chance into a classic sports rags-to-riches story isn't all that far-fetched.

"We're all so excited," said Clouse. "We've been joking that we came out of retirement just for this. It's actually pretty nice to be able to have that week off where we weren't even practicing and we all feel really fresh and we're really ready to go. I think we were all saying that this is the most excited that we've ever felt for a practice."

The best part of the new lease on life for the seniors is that they have a chance to write a new ending, regardless of whether it comes to Emory or somewhere beyong. The team was disappointed with how they played in the Chapman loss, and the seniors felt like it was a sour note on which to end their careers. Now they can end on a different note, on an entirely different stage. 

"I think it was definitely tough to lose a game like that, especially on their home field," said Clouse. "It was a team we had already beaten before (2-1 on Oct. 12). To have that be our last soccer game ever kind of made a lot of us feel not-so-great. Now that we have this additional game, we're all so excited. We're really ready to go."