W. soccer posts best season ever, winning outright Ivy title

Scoring two goals in one soccer game is not typically considered to be a great accomplishment.

For Penn State, however, putting two goals past the women's soccer team to win the opening round of the NCAA Div. I tournament was just that.

Not a single other team on the Tigers' 16-game regular season schedule had been able to accomplish it — not even the two teams that defeated Princeton. Both those teams, Harvard and William & Mary, managed only one goal, in back-to-back, 1-0 overtime decisions.

"It is ridiculous to think that we had no more than one goal scored on us throughout the regular season," sophomore midfielder/defender Brea Griffiths said. "I don't know how possible it will be to repeat that next season."

Senior defender Heather Deerin emerged as the leader of the Tigers' stifling defense — and her role did not go unnoticed. In addition to receiving a first-team All-Ivy selection, she was named a first-team All-Mid-Atlantic Regional selection by the National Soccer Coaches' Association of America.

"This was a great year for us," Deerin, who will work as an assistant coach with the squad, said of the season. "We pretty consistently played our best soccer, with only a couple of lapses."

On the offensive end, the team's young guns provided a lot of Princeton's firepower. In fact, 22 of the Tigers' 28 goals came from the foot of either a freshman or a sophomore.

Furthermore, a total of five underclassmen received All-Ivy honors, including sophomore midfielder/defender Esmeralda Negron as a first-team selection next to Deerin. Sophomore defender Rochelle Willis, Griffiths and freshman midfielder Emily Behncke were second-team All-Ivy selections, and sophomore forward Janine Willis (as well as one senior, forward Krista Ariss) received an honorable mention.

Behncke was also named the 2002 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and another freshman, midfielder/forward Maura Gallagher, was twice selected Ivy League Rookie of the Week.

Despite these individual honors, Deerin made it clear that the credit for Princeton's success belongs to the team as a whole. "There were no stars on this squad," she said, "but our depth allowed us to always field 11 quality players."

Princeton's 12-game winning streak to start the season was the second-longest streak in program history. Before the overtime loss to Harvard, the Tigers had been the only undefeated, untied team in the division.

Although Harvard's win on Oct. 26 prevented Princeton from wrapping up the Ivy League championship, it was only a temporary obstruction. A week later, in driving snow, the Tigers knocked down Cornell, 2-0, to secure the first outright Ivy title in program history.

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"Winning the Ivy League title outright was number one when we set goals in the preseason," Griffiths said. "We expected a lot of ourselves this fall, so we weren't surprised to have won the title. But we were thrilled that we didn't have to share it with anyone."

The Tigers received an automatic bid to the NCAA tourney with the league title. However, the chance to progress beyond the first round of the tournament slipped from the Tigers' paws when Penn State's Christie Welsh — the recipient of the 2001 Hermann Award, awarded to the nation's top collegiate women's soccer player — scored two goals 39 seconds apart within the first fifteen minutes of the game.

"Our final game against Penn State was the only time that I felt we came up against a team that was simply better than us," Deerin said. "It was a tough NCAA draw, but I think it was good to come up against a team like that because we learned a lot about where we stand and what we have to do to compete with a program like that."

So Penn State was the first team in 2002 to crack Princeton's defense more than once in a single game. But the words of Penn State head coach Paul Wilkins show that right up to the final game of the season, the Tigers played their hearts out.

"Princeton is a good, hard and well-organized team," he said. "This is the most hardworking team we have faced all year."

If that hard work continues, the future can only be brighter for the Tigers.