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Chico State 3, Cal State San Bernardino 2

• Goals: Shelby Lanksbury (1); Lindsey Dias (1); Katie Woodrum (1).
• Game notes: Chico State ends season on five-game win streak; Wildcats get first round bye in CCAA tournament.

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Thursday night’s game between the Chico State women’s soccer team and San Bernardino State Coyotes had many playoff implications. With their 3-2 win, the Wildcats get a bye in the opening round of the California Collegiate Athletic Association tournament.

The Wildcats end regular season play on a five-game win streak with record of 11-4-2, 8-2-1 CCAA, which is good for second place in the conference.

Chico State scored early in the first half on a corner kick that got buried into the net by a Shelby Lanksbury header. The Wildcats took a 1-0 lead and didn’t stop there.

Lindsey Dias got the Wildcats to 2-0 on a deflection by Pooja Patel. Dias struck the ball out of the reach of the goaltender. The Wildcats had one more goal in them.

Chico State’s third goal of the first half came from the tandem of Megan Tabler and Katie Woodrum. Tabler hit a nice corner kick that ended up getting getting scored by a Woodrum header. Chico took the lead 3-0 to end the half.

There was no quit in the Coyotes as they made the second half very competitive. Melanie Aguayo had two goals for San Bernardino that made the game more compelling to watch. The head referee let these two teams play aggressively and coach Kim Sutton took notice,

“It’s hard and it’s a culture you have to build with your team,” Sutton said. “You have to respect the ref’s because there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Goalkeeper Brianna Furner ended the regular season with 70 saves and eight shutouts.

“At this point we knew what it came down to,” Furner said. “For us we didn’t want to play on Sunday we wanted the bye. We wanted to go into the tournament with more momentum.It’s in our blood.”

Angelo Boscacci can be reached at [email protected] or @boscacci6 on Twitter.