Women’s Soccer Takes Home NCAA Regional Title

This past weekend, Middlebury women’s soccer hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, beating out Maine Farmington and Ithaca College to keep its season alive.

The Panthers’ first-round matchup against the Maine Farmington Beavers on Saturday, Nov. 10 was a 4-1 easy win for the third-ranked Panthers. Abigail Byler ’19, Olivia Miller ’20, Eliza Van Voorhis ’21 and Eliza Robinson ’21 scored a point each for Middlebury, while their opponents could only manage to put up one. Middlebury boasted a 51-2 shot advantage over the Beavers and held each of the game’s 16 corner kicks. 

Fresh off their first-round win, the Panthers headed into their second game of the weekend on Sunday, Nov. 11 to try to win the NCAA regional final title. This matchup against Ithaca certainly proved to be more of a challenge than that of the previous day, as regulation time ran out with the teams still standing at 0-0. A double overtime gave no advantage for either team, and for the second time in two weeks, Middlebury headed into a shootout to fight to keep its season alive.

Despite much back-and-forth action during the field play, Middlebury easily dominated the shootout and proved itself as the team deserving the regional title. Shootout goalie Eva Shaw ’19.5 of Middlebury heroically stopped all three of Ithaca’s attempts, while Sarah DiCenso ’19, Ellie Greenberg ’20 and Cate Shellenback ’22 all made theirs on the flipside for the Panthers.

This marks just the eighth NCAA regional final win ever for Middlebury women’s soccer, another definite indication of the Panthers’ incredible season this fall.

Now, Middlebury will move on to the tournament’s sectionals next weekend, in which it will host one of the four sectional sites. The Panthers will face Swarthmore College on Saturday, Nov. 17, and a win will propel them to the quarterfinals on Sunday.

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