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BOO-YA! Pioneers celebrate Halloween early with the MWC title

by Marisa Whitley

Pioneer fans who braved the chilly weather last weekend were treated to back-to-back demonstrations of college soccer at its best. Four of the best DIII women’s teams in the MWC went head-to-head over the weekend in a drawn out battle for the conference title and a bid to the NCAA tournament.

The Grinnell women’s soccer team had an amazing weekend, defeating Lake Forest in the semifinals on Saturday and bringing home the conference title after a gripping shootout that gave Grinnell the win, 5-3.

The women went into Saturday’s match against Lake Forest “at a disadvantage,” said defender Gabi Maldonado-Bell ’09. “We had already lost to Lake Forest … they obviously had one up on us.”

The team stepped up to the challenge and came out with a 2-0 victory with goals scored by Katherine Ni ’09 and Maldonado-Bell in the 41st and 88th minutes, respectively.

“The freshmen really stepped up [this weekend] and made their presence known,” said Maldonado-Bell.

Sunday’s tournament finals pitted the Carroll Lady Pioneers against Grinnell’s own Pioneers. Carroll and Grinnell both went into the finals with eight conference victories under their belts, indicating the dominating presence of both of these teams during the regular season.

Neither team backed down for even one second during the entire match. Although there were no points on the board at the half, the score did not reflect the aggressive intensity of the game.

The game quickly became very physical. A total of 35 fouls were called during the match, 20 to Carroll and 15 to Grinnell.

“[Carroll] always are a physical team. I think everyone dealt with it pretty well and just tried to keep playing our game,” said midfielder and team captain Kara Moskowitz ’06.

The physical tension came to a head when forward Kate Diedrick ’07 was removed late in the game after a soft red card, leaving the Pioneers one player short for the remainder of the match.

“I didn’t feel like [the red card] was deserved at all,” said Kara Moskowitz.

“Last weekend’s game got really crazy, there were cards everywhere,” said midfielder Julie Ault ’08. “I think the refs were trying to keep it under control.”

Caroll tied the game in the 80th minute of play, which forced the game into two scoreless overtime periods.

“I didn’t think there was any way we were going to be able to score with one man down in overtime,” said Kara Moskowitz.

Grinnell sent Rachel Moskowitz ’06, Kara Moskowitz, Sofia Skraba ’08 , Julia Bradley-Cook ’06 and goalkeeper Liz Carrier ’07 into the shoot-out. All of the Pioneers made their penalty kicks and one miss by a Carroll player was enough to secure the MWC title for Grinnell.

“Going into double overtime and having people playing 110 minutes of soccer and just being exhausted, I think we showed a lot of heart in doing what we needed to do,” said Kara Moskowitz. “We had the home field advantage, the fans and we really, really wanted it.”

This is the first time since 2002 that the Grinnell team has won both the conference title and the MWC tournament.

The team is also ranked 10th regionally, the first time this has happened since Coach Heather Benning took over the team eight years ago. The team will move on to nationals in early November, possibly playing Loras or Macalaster in the first round.

“I think we can definitely hang with them,” said Maldonado-Bell. “We just need to be able to keep our cool and play our game.”

Sidebar:

Postseason

• Grinnell women’s soccer has the MWC bid to the NCAA Regional Tournament

• Times and locations for the women’s soccer NCAA regionals will be announced next week

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