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Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

Chico State's independent student newspaper

The Orion

Women’s soccer enters postseason as CCAA’s best

Published 2007-10-31T00:00:00Z”/>

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Aaron Marine

—-<em>Watch footage of the soccer team with our</em> <a href= “http://media.www.theorion.com/media/storage/paper889/news/2007/10/31/Multimedia/Video.Fall.Sports.Roundup-3067169.shtml” target=”_blank”>online-exclusive video</a>. <em>It will open in a new window</em>.—-

After ending the regular season with a three-game winning streak, the women’s soccer team is gearing up for the conference championships this weekend at UC San Diego.

Over the last two weeks, the Wildcats clinched a playoff berth and the north division title with a pair of wins on the road against the top south division UC San Diego Tritons and Cal State Dominguez Hills Toros.

They have won five of their last seven matches.

With the regular season over, the ‘Cats will enter the postseason as the No.1 overall seed in the CCAA Championship Tournament.

The tournament starts on Friday with a match against the Sonoma State Seawolves, the No. 4 seed.

The Humboldt State Lumberjacks and the UC San Diego Tritons are the other teams in the tournament, which play each other Friday as well. If the Wildcats beat the Seawolves, they will meet one of these teams Sunday in the title game.

In the meantime, the ‘Cats prepare for the postseason.

“We need to keep up our mental and physical edge,” said head coach Kim Sutton. “We are ready for the tournament. We just need to work on fine tuning.”

The way the ‘Cats have been performing lately is promising with the postseason ahead, junior Melissa Lindsay said.

“Performance wise we doing good,” she said. “We need to stay focused on the first and last 15 minutes of the match.”

Lindsay scored the winning goal for the Wildcats in the last game of the season Saturday against the Cal State Stanislaus Warriors.

After a great passing set by Courtney Quan and Tracee Sterry, Lindsay received the ball and put a shot right past the goalie in the 69th minute on the way to the Wildcats’ 2-1 victory.

The Warriors fought hard against the ‘Cats, Lindsay said.

“It was definitely a physical match with hard fouls going both ways,” Lindsay said.

In the first half the Wildcats came out flat, with the Warriors scoring in the 25th minute off their only corner kick of the match.

The Wildcats rebounded to tie up the match right before the end of the first half when freshman Molly Downtain scored her first career goal in the 43rd minute off one of five corner kicks the Wildcats had in the match.

With the advantage in corner kicks for the match, the ‘Cats were able to capitalize on scoring opportunities, Sutton said.

“(Corner kicks are) so dangerous for us, and it was a critical goal,” Sutton said. “You don’t want to go into the half down 1-0.”

Even though the Wildcats were trailing at the start, they kept playing hard, Downtain said.

“We started out slow, but kept playing it fast,” the freshman said.

The second half was key to the Wildcats’ success.

“We battled a little more, and it was a very lopsided second half,” Sutton said.

Seniors Kari Gonzales, Katherine Bagwell, Quan, Whitney MacDonald and Ashley Gunther were honored before the game for their careers in a Wildcat uniform.

Ending the regular season 10-3-1 in conference, the ‘Cats head off to the playoffs for the fourth straight year.

The Wildcats have a good chance of winning the conference tournament and should also make it to the NCAA tournament, Sutton said.

“It’s going to be difficult for us not to make the NCAA playoffs as well,” she said.

Aaron Marine can be reached at <a href= “mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a>

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