Sometimes all a team needs is a small amount of luck in order to truly unleash their talent. The women’s club soccer team was given that chance Saturday at the Clemson Club Soccer Tournament. After tying two games and losing one in the group stages, it seemed as though the women were not going to the quarterfinals. The Pack found themselves tied for the eighth seed spot with Clemson. The two were tied in points, goal differential, goals scored, and goals allowed. Freshman Cristina Maldonado described the detail that put her team into the final eight.
“We were tied in every aspect,” Maldonado said. “They had a rule that whoever had traveled the furthest to get to the tournament got to go on if they were tied in every other way. So, we eliminated the host team out of their own tournament based on a technicality.”
That stroke of luck is just what the team needed to open the flood gates and let the goals pour. With a critical goal line clearance made by freshman fullback Michelle Casserman and a 25-yard, top-shelf screamer from junior striker Alle Leonard, the Wolfpack sent the No. 1 seeded Penn State team packing with a 1-0 victory.
The next day, the last-seeded Pack went on to play the No. 4 seeded Coastal Carolina in the semifinals. Senior center midfielder Jordan Saylor put the Pack on the board after a penalty was given for a handball. Freshman forward Amanda Welsh and sophomore midfielder Stephanie Summe quickly followed with two goals each, making the game a 5-0 affair. The Coastal Carolina coach, seeing his team as a fish in a barrel, made a gesture to the referee with his hand across his neck, forfeiting the match twenty minutes early. Senior forward Logan Corley noticed the advantage this gave the Pack for their final match-up.
“It gave us a chance to save our legs,” Corley said. “That was twenty minutes less that we had to play and we got to watch ECU finish their game against Auburn, which they won 1-0. It was a pretty hotly contested match.”
The fate of the Pack then rested in their own hands as they saw themselves slotted against their most rivaled team. The competitions between the ECU and N.C. State women’s club soccer usually end up being very heated and closely contested ordeals. In this instance, however, the Wolfpack women made short work of the Pirates. Saylor slotted her second goal of the tournament early in the match. Welsh, who had found her form, put in her third of the day, placing the Pack in a 2-0 lead. Senior goalkeeper Sam Walker described the horrifying events that followed the second goal of the game.
“We were up 2-0,” Walker said. “ECU, being our rival, was coming at us hard. They sent in a corner. I was going up sideways for it, as the ball is coming in from the right, and an ECU girl hits me in the eye. I don’t know what it was, either her elbow or her head. From then, I was out.”
Walker, who was later taken to a hospital, suffered from three broken bones in her face and a ruptured blood vessel in her left eye. She fractured her zygomatic arch, orbital bone, and a sinus bone. The zygomatic arch break, which caused the bone to buckle inwards, has left Walker with only partial use of her jaw bone and numbness in the left side of her face. She will have to undergo surgery to fix the issue.
After Walker’s exit from the field, Maldonado took her spot in between the posts and kept the Wolfpack’s sheet clean while her teammates finished the job. Midfielders Morgan Smith and Emmi Tyson both slotted a goal apiece, closing the match at 4-0 and setting the bar higher for future fixtures between the two clubs.
This is the first time that the N.C. State women’s club team has won the Clemson Club Soccer Tournament since 2008. The women will next be seen in action at the 7v7 Carolina Cup hosted by UNC in Chapel Hill on April 16 and 17.
