Championship Memories Saturday: CMS Women's Soccer Takes 2019 NCAA Regional Title
2019 NCAA Regional Championship Links
Emory Game Story
Emory Postgame Press Conference
Cal Lutheran Game Story
Cal Lutheran Postgame Press Conference
Cal Lutheran Photo Gallery
Cal Lutheran PK Shootout Highlights (Twitter)
Most championship seasons have a key turning point. A big comeback. A dramatic win over a top rival. A game where a team overcomes adversity and develops the confidence and fortitude needed to become champions.
For the 2019 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's soccer team, that turning point was a little unusual. It came off the field on a Monday morning, while most of the players were sitting in classrooms.
The Athenas had a successful regular season, but got caught on the short end of a numbers game. There were five strong teams bunched at the top of the SCIAC standings, with a big dropoff to sixth, and only four bids to the league tournament available. A tough 1-0 defeat at Chapman in the regular season finale left CMS in that unlucky fifth place spot, on the outside looking in, thinking their season was over. It was a similar ending to 2018, when a 1-0 loss to Occidental on the final day knocked CMS out, and the Athenas played the 2019 season with the pressure of trying to avoid that fate again, only to have history seemingly repeat itself in agonizing fashion.
The NCAA selection show on that fateful Monday morning over a week later was an event that most of the team didn't have on their calendars. There were some whispers that maybe CMS was under consideration, due to a couple of big non-conference wins over Pacific Lutheran and Illinois Wesleyan, but only the most wide-eyed optimists really thought a bid was possible after missing the conference tournament.
Everyone's eyes opened wide, though, when the news started spreading via happy text message: "We're in!"
"I was actually in my biochemistry class when I got the news," said defender/midfielder Katrina Ostrom, "so I definitely had to contain my excitement."
"I was in my Spanish 044 class with two other teammates when the news broke," said midfielder Lauryn Jeans. "The best way I can describe how I felt was shock. The excitement and exhilaration came about 30 minutes later. The tears came about an hour after that when I bumped into one of our seniors."
The team's resume, which also included a win and a tie against SCIAC rival and regional host Cal Lutheran, proved to be good enough, and the Athenas were sent back to Cal Lutheran to the NCAA Regionals at Thousand Oaks to face Emory in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The Saturday winner would come back 24 hours later to face the winner of the Cal Lutheran-UC Santa Cruz game for the right to advance to the sections.
The team's five seniors (Gabby Clouse, Hayden Craig, Kira Favakeh, Rhiann Holman, and Sarah Tocher) had come to grips the previous week with the apparent end of their college careers, coming up barely short of their goal of getting back to the NCAA Tournament, and all of a sudden they had a chance at redemption. It was also a big moment for Ostrom, who missed the last four weeks of the regular season with an injury and wasn't able to be out there for the stretch run, including the big Chapman game, but would be available to return for the NCAA Tournament.
"It was huge for me to get a chance to play again, said Ostrom. "I had expectations for myself to return after surgery, and a re-injury really dampened that. It also meant a lot knowing I'd get a chance to play with our seniors again, so across the board the excitement was definitely high that day."
After the excitement of the second chance settled in, the next order of business was to take full advantage of the reprieve. It started right from the first practice.
"Our mindset going into the Emory game was amazing," said Ostrom. "Practices leading up to the game were super sharp, focused, and fast paced. We felt like we had nothing to lose but everything to prove, and that really fueled us to play our best soccer, which we knew we could do but had not really shown our opponents yet."
The Emory game essentially gave the Athenas a chance to write an alternate ending to the story of their season, given that the original ending met with strong disapproval from target audiences.
"We just did not want to waste it," said Jeans. "We recognized how lucky we were to be able to put that uniform back on and play with our seniors one last time. That game against Emory was all about giving our seniors the ending that they deserved and just fighting as a team. We had already gone through the process of getting knocked out of SCIAC, so we had nothing left to lose. That mentality allowed us to play freed from expectation and standards, and we just decided to focus instead on playing the game that we love with the teammates that we love."
The game began as if the new storyline would be almost too good to be true, as it took only 2:12 for Tocher, one of the seniors playing with new life, to score and give CMS a 1-0 lead. Sports doesn't always follow a fairytale script, of course, and Emory was able to answer back just three minutes later to leave the score tied 1-1 before the game was even six minutes old.
The teams settled in after the bang-bang start, before CMS got the break it needed in the second half with a penalty kick. Tocher stepped to the line looking for her second goal, but had her shot saved by diving Emory goalkeeper Haley Pratt. Sophomore midfielder Nicole Oberlag alertly followed the play, though, and scored on the rebound to give CMS the 2-1 lead with 26:37 left to play. A big rebound goal in a big rebound game for the Athenas.
There were some nervy moments over the final 25 minutes as Emory had three corner kicks, and junior goalie Cam Hamson was called on to make a couple of key saves two minutes apart. But the last 10 minutes saw the Athenas buckle down and not allow a shot attempt as it held on for a 2-1 win and advanced to the regional finals the next night against Cal Lutheran.
The Athenas and Regals knew each other well, with the two teams tying 1-1 in the first meeting in the regular season (on a late Cal Lutheran equalizer), and CMS winning the rematch in Claremont 1-0 on a Holman penalty kick. The third meeting was predictably a tight one and ended in a stalemate after 110 minutes. Ten shots apiece, and no goals on either side, as the Athenas were able to breathe a sigh of relief when the Regals missed wide on an overtime counter attack, as Hamson and the CMS back line of junior Grace Pratt, sophomores Gracyn Buenconsejo and Samantha Ree, and first-year Taylor Arakaki preserved a clean sheet.
The 0-0 tie meant that the regional championship would be decided on penalty kicks, which can be a cruel ending to a season. Goals scored in the flow of play are often reactive, with no time to think. Even a free kick on a set piece with play stopped is a chance for glory with little risk. There's a wall of defenders, a goalie, 20+ yards of distance, and small slivers of daylight to aim for, so the expecations for success are low.
Penalty kicks, of course, are just the opposite. You're on an island 12 yards away from the goal line, with lots of time to think, and you're totally expected to make it. It's similar to pressure free throws in basketball, with a major difference being that many soccer players stepping to the spot with the season on the line haven't taken a penalty kick in a game all season, or even in their careers. There's no past successes to draw from. No routine perfected through trial and error. No muscle memory hardened from game situations.
Of course, a lot of time in practice is devoted to penalty kicks in anticipation of moments like these, and the hope is that the dry runs will make an intense pressure-packed game situation feel a little bit more comfortable.
"We had actually been practicing penalty kicks that week leading up to the game," said Ostom, "so I think we just put our trust in that preparation and in our teammates."
With CMS up 2-1 after three rounds on conversions from Tocher and Ree (a first-time penalty taker), Favakeh went into her bag of tricks and chipped a delicate one down the middle right under the bar for a 3-1 lead. Cal Lutheran answered to make it 3-2 after the fourth round, and Jeans, with no career penalty kick attempts in college, began the lonely walk from midfield with a chance to seal the win. Her focus on that walk was not so much on her kick, but on the most basic of tasks.
"To be honest not a lot went through my head," she admitted. "I personally know that when I overthink things, I tend to freak myself out. I actually was doing a breathing exercise as I walked to the PK spot. I put all my nerves, all those overwhelming thoughts, and all the outside noises behind me and just focused on my breathing. That was why I didn't run to the spot like every other player had before me, but rather I walked slowly trying to keep my composure and my breathing controlled."
Her teammates might have been breathing a little more heavily in anticipation, but they all believed, and Jeans was able to reward their faith with a well-executed kick into the side netting.
"When Lauryn stepped up for that last kick to win it, I remember saying that there's nobody that I would trust more to handle the pressure in that moment," said Ostrom. "And when it went in, we were just ecstatic that we got another week to play with our best friends."
Any athlete dreams of making the play to win a championship, and Jeans got to live out that moment, as she let go of her controlled breathing exercises and let an avalanche of emotions come out.
"Pure adrenaline," Jeans said of the feeling of sealing the title. "That moment after the ball went in, when my teammates started sprinting at me, was glorious and life-changing. I remember that the head of the people running at me was senior Rhiann Holman, and I just recall thinking, 'That was for our seniors. That was for our team,' as I jumped up and gave her the biggest hug."
The seniors were on everyone's mind as the tears of a premature ending two weeks ago had given way to the ecstasy of winning a regional championship and advancing as far as any team in program history.
"The seniors were a super amazing group of student-athletes," said Ostrom. "Being able to send them off by matching program history was just a testament to how special that group is."
The run kept going and Ostrom scored a second-half goal against No. 3 WashU in the opening round of sectionals (Round of 16) to give CMS a 1-0 lead. The Bears, though, came up with an equalizer and prevailed in overtime. That goal was especially rewarding for Ostrom, who went from seemingly having her junior season end with an injury to scoring a huge postseason goal, which raised the ceiling of expectations going forward.
"Individually, one of my favorite moments was scoring the goal to go ahead against Wash U in the Sweet 16 game," she said. "For me personally, that was just huge validation for all the time spent in rehab since surgery, and it meant so much for me to contribute to the team in a big game like that. In that moment, we really felt like we could win that game and advance to the Elite 8, and while that didn't happen, I think it sparked a fire in our team seeing what we as a program are capable of achieving in the future."
Ostrom also referenced the bus ride home from Cal Lutheran among her favorite memories, a feeling with Jeans echoed.
"Our celebration on the bus after the win against Cal Lutheran was by far my favorite moment," she said. "Everyone was singing, dancing, and laughing for what seemed like the first time in months. I have never experienced that amount of pure happiness from our team before. It was the energy of a team that was making good use of their second chance."
And making championship memories that will last a lifetime.