Beyond the Numbers 2015 Women's Soccer

Women's Soccer

Beyond the Numbers: 2015 women's soccer team produced the best season to date and set multiple school records

'Beyond the Numbers' is a new series on www.CampbellsvilleTigers.com of feature articles sharing stories the go beyond the championships, stats and records. Read first-person experiences from CU coaches, student-athletes and alums from their favorite memories as a CU Tiger.

The 2015-16 academic school year was the year of the Tiger and it was no different for the women's soccer team which produced the best season on record.
 
Having finished the season with a school record of 19 wins, the Lady Tigers held opponents to scoring only 12 goals while scoring 75 goals themselves. Offense will always get the credit in matches when the team wins, but the defense was something special in itself.
 
Morgan Danis, Taylor Pence, Rachel Seals, Anne Hare, and goalkeeper Amanda Howard proved to be one of the best defenses in the country. The group of five started in all 22 matches holding teams to only 115 shots on goal as well as 16 shutouts. Howard made 125 saves overall, while also having a career-high 14 saves against Lindsey Wilson.
 
Good defense turns into better offense and it was an overall effort for the Lady Tigers that season. Mhairi Fyfe led the team in goals with 27 and it made her a target for a lot of teams' defenses. Fyfe went on to set the school record in goals on October 3rd, 2015 when the team played Pikeville at home. Only six minutes into the match Fyfe passed alumnus Jessica Ralph as the programs all-time leading goal scorer.  
 
With Fyfe being a target for a lot of teams' defenses, this created opportunities for upperclassmen Chelsea Gill, Rachel Veatch, Kathryn Thomas, Aris Kuntz and Devon Burnside. Veatch was second on the team with 13 goals, while Gill tallied 10. Then it was the all-around offensive numbers that followed. Kuntz had five goals and six assists, while Thomas finished with three goals and six assists. Burnside led the way with a lot of set pieces tallying 10 assists. 
 
"Going into the season we had a lot of upperclassmen and we didn't really think much of it," said Gill. "We wanted to be THAT TEAM of course but it took time. Once you start to tally wins one after the next, that's all it takes... a group that believes they are one of the best in the country."
 
What made the team start believing was their first test of the year in an early season overtime showdown against Marian University. The team had to come from behind to force the overtime after the Knights scored a goal in the first half. A goal by Fyfe came in the 62nd minute to even the score, then it followed with her golden goal in the 95th minute.
 
A few weeks following, the Lady Tigers began to receive national attention. For the first time in program history in the September 22nd poll the team was in the receiving votes category for the NAIA Top 25 poll. Decisively defeating their next two opponents that week they immediately went into the top 25 on September 29th coming in at No. 19.  
 
"Everyone was great at this point in the season," said Thomas. "There wasn't any girl on the team that wasn't bought into what we were doing. Scoring that amount of goals your first instinct as a player is to shoot but also to make sure it was a quality shot."
 
Putting 65 goals in while also only conceding six helped the team remain in the Top 25 at the end of the regular season. The team finished off the regular season with only one loss coming against top ranked Lindsey Wilson. Over the course of the final six games, the team put together a 50% shot on goal percentage hitting 26 shots on goal with 52 shots coming in the postseason. 
 
Going into the conference tournament, the Lady Tigers finished runner-up to yet again Lindsey Wilson. The following week after the tournament they earned their first bid to the NAIA Opening Round with a match against Ashford University at home - which set the Tigers and Lady Tigers both as Opening Round hosts. Most of the time it is a team that is the only opponent, this time it wasn't just the team, the weather was the biggest game changer.
 
With consistent winds at 30 mph as well as gusts up to 40 and an average temperature of 37 degrees at kickoff it was anything less than ideal playing conditions. The key to the game was keeping the ball on the ground. Burnside had the game-winning goal with only 28 seconds left to go in the first half. Five different players scored in this match along Burnside - Carson Cline, Taylor Pence, Rachel Veatch, and Erica McWilliams all found the back of the net as CU won 5-0.
 
"IT. WAS. COLD," said Burnside. "If the ball hit you, it hurt. If you headed the ball, it hurt but scoring that goal at the end of the first half with the wind in our face was a key motivation boost going into the second half."
 
The season did not end the way that a lot of the team had hoped when making it to the championship site. Having a 4-0 defeat to No. 7 ranked Benedictine University is what ended the year for the Lady Tigers. For the upperclassmen the season resonated of what the program was going to be capable of in the years to come.
 
"At this point we already set so many new school records and made it to the big dance it was now a collective (how much more) can we go with this run," said Veatch. "Granted the result says otherwise but there was no pressure on us with never even being ranked to making it to the championship site was cool in itself." 

#BeyondTheNumbers Archives
2015 Men's Cross Country - (Dec. 7)
 
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