The San Diego State women’s soccer team has done it again. Last Saturday marked the second straight year the Aztecs have won the regular-season and tournament championships when they beat the third-seeded Boise State University 1-0 in the Mountain West tournament championship game.
[quote]“It feels amazing,” junior forward Hannah Keane said. “I mean, we worked really hard for this one and we started the season off a little tough, but once we started getting the momentum going it really worked out when we started playing our game. It feels great.”[/quote]
The Broncos didn’t make this an easy win for the Aztecs, however.
In the first half, neither team could score, but both were firing off shots, with six attempted shots coming from Boise State and nine from the Aztecs. Defensively, Broncos redshirt junior goalkeeper Maddy McDevitt had four saves, while SDSU redshirt sophomore goalkeeper Melanie Vaughn had three.
After halftime, SDSU and the Broncos continued to keep each other away from the net. That is, until the 69th minute when Keane scored the first and last goal of the game from 15 yards out into the lower left corner of the net. This was Keane’s 12th goal of the year.
[quote]“Haley Palmer drove up the side and she dribbled like three people and I tried to get into a spot where she could pass it to me or rebound if she shot it, and then thought she was going to get fouled and the ball just popped out and I just finished it off as well as I could,” Keane said.[/quote]
Boise State was desperately trying to answer back with a goal of its own and almost succeeded in the final minutes of the game, until Vaughn made a diving save to keep the Aztecs on top.
[quote]“My goal was to keep the defense organized and to just keep the ball out of the net,” Vaughn said.[/quote]
The game ended with SDSU outshooting the Broncos 16-10, with Keane and sophomore midfielder Victoria Barba leading the team with three shots apiece. Vaughn finished with a total of five saves to help secure the Aztecs’ win.
Keane earned MVP honors and Barba, Keane, redshirt senior midfielder Sophie Metz and Vaughn were named to the all-tourney team, giving the Aztecs more reasons to celebrate at the end of the tournament.
A league school hasn’t won back-to-back regular-season and tournament championships since Brigham Young University in 2000-02.
[quote]“It’s been an unbelievable year for us, in terms of the start we had, which was really difficult,” head coach Mike Friesen said. “We had a lot of adversity on the road. For us, it didn’t start the way we wanted it to. Determination and the ability to play from behind in our record to being behind a couple times on Thursday just says a lot about this team’s resiliency.”[/quote]
SDSU, now 13-6-2 overall, will move on to the NCAA tournament and will find out who, when and where they play this week.
Photo by Jordan Owen, Senior Staff Photographer
