On Friday Oct. 22 the Trinity Women’s Soccer team played their last home game and final conference match of the regular season against Schreiner University. The Tigers emerged on top, beating the Mountaineers 9-1.

Trinity finished their regular season on Sunday play with a loss against DI University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), who the Tigers had defeated earlier in the season during a scrimmage.
Trinity is now heading into the post-season ranked 23rd and has a season record of 12-2-1, 6-1-0 in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC).

Despite the disappointing outcome of the match against UTSA, the Schreiner game was a great close-in conference play as the Tigers prepare for the SCAC Championship Tournament.
The match saw especially high attendance, partly because it was the final home game of the season and partly because it was Alumni Weekend. Roughly 200 people showed up to cheer the Tigers on.

Within the first five minutes, the game took an unexpected twist as Schreiner scored the first goal of the night. The improbable goal was the result of a high ball by Schreiner’s Alexandra Schott that loped over first-year goalkeeper Lauryn Lewis.

According to sophomore winger Kyra Stafford, that first goal took the team by surprise.

“It started off a little bit scary because they scored right in the first five minutes, that was kind of unexpected so it did take us a little bit of time to finally really get going and get a bunch of goals,” said Stafford.

Schott had the opportunity to score because Schreiner’s offense slipped past Trinity’s defense and took advantage of that opportunity.

“Our first five minutes is definitely an area that we can work on [as a team]. They definitely just caught us off guard there for a second and we didn’t stop that girl in time.” Stafford said.

After that first goal, Scheiner managed to hold onto their lead for the majority of the first half. But unfortunately for the Mountaineers, Trinity’s defense recovered and successfully prevented the Schreiner offense from making any additional shots on goal for the rest of the entire game.
Schreiner’s offense continued to put pressure on Trinity’s defense, but the Tigers fended the Mountaineers off. According to sophomore transfer from University of North Dallas Ashley Zingelmann who plays left-back defense, communication and maintaining possession were the defense’s main objectives.

“Our goal for the weekend is to communicate with the lines in front of us and not allow any space for them to play. So basically, just not even letting [Schreiner] break out and have possession and just like stopping it immediately. [And to play] with intensity and dominance to win the ball back right away and start playing our game, offensively.” said Zingelmann.

The game started to turn in Trinity’s direction when senior Kaity Ward scored the first goal of the night for the Tigers with an assist from sophomore Reese Wallace at the 28th minute.
Ward’s goal was closely followed by a point scored by senior Alex Walsh with an assist from junior Molly Sheridan, which brought Trinity into the lead.

The third goal of the night for Trinity was set up by a long pass from junior Cassie Bowers to Stafford, who drew the goalie out of the net before crossing the ball to Ward who scored on an empty net.

According to Bowers, who plays midfield and forward, Trinity’s offense has been focusing on implementing layered plays that rely on teamwork to score.

“Offensively, we’re focusing on getting really, really good quality chances into the box and making sure that we’re having: one, lay-off runs into the box through finishes, two, that we’re actually arriving to the goal on our runs in, and three, that we’re putting finishing chances on goal because one of our big goals for the midfield and for the forwards is to create not only goals, but team goals. So [goals] that are coming from the mids or the defense out wide crossing [make it so that] we have layered runs, and to create really high-quality chances,” said Bowers.

With two minutes left in the first half, Bowers scored a goal from within the goal area with an assist from first-year Michaela Bosco. The Tigers went into halftime up 4-1 having made a total of nine shots on goal.

The second half of the game seemed to be the reverse of the beginning of the first half, with Trinity’s offense putting pressure on Schreiner’s defense but unable to score despite making multiple shots on goal.

At the 54th minute of the second half, Ward scored for the third time with an assist from senior Camryn Beall. Ward scored again two minutes later when Walsh intercepted a short ball from Schreiner and passed it forward to Ward for the assist.

Ward scored for the third time consecutively with an assist from Zingelmann sending the ball past Schreiner’s goalkeeper and into the net earning a seventh point for the Tigers.
This goal was Ward’s fifth goal of the night — and her fifteenth of the season — breaking the Trinity single-game record for goals. Since the former record was first set in 1998 it has been tied 8 times but never broken, until this weekend. Ward is also the first player in SCAC to score five or more goals in a single game since 2016.

Ward broke an additional record a minute later by taking the ball from the midfield into the box and drawing the goalkeeper out to make the assist for Sheridan. Sheridan’s goal brought the score to 8-1, and Ward’s assist gave her an 11-point game — each goal is worth two points and each assist is worth one — breaking the record set in 2005.

The final goal of the night was scored by Bosco with an assist from sophomore Isabel Maulski, bringing the final score to 9-1 and the Tigers to a total of 20 shots on goal.

After a successful season, the 23rd ranked Tigers head into the postseason, looking ahead to playing in the SCAC Championship Tournament, which takes place November 5th and 7th, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) DIII Championship Tournament.

According to Head Women’s Soccer Coach Dylan Harrison, the pressure is on for the SCAC championship even after a successful season.

“The great part about a conference tournament is, it’s a win or you’re done situation […] so we can’t leave anything up for chance, you know, we talk a lot about creating our own luck. The game itself is a cruel game and the fact is that you can outplay teams for 89 minutes and still possibly lose. That’s just a pressure that we have within our own sport. [Winning] is not a foregone conclusion. We have to play well, we have to execute, we have to be prepared. And so the good part is [getting to play in] that environment. If you take care of what you need to do there, it’s going to prepare you for the NCAA tournament because again that’s exactly what you’re gonna experience,” said Harrison.