The last Knights team playing from the fall season has been eliminated from the postseason. The Geneseo women’s soccer team fell to Johns Hopkins University 3-1 on Sunday Nov. 16 after rolling through SUNYAC Tournament play and winning their opening round game of the NCAA Tournament. The Knights had a tough opening round game against Frostburg State University on Saturday Nov. 15. Geneseo let in three goals in the opening 13 minutes of the game.
Despite the large deficit, Geneseo fought back and tied the game with less than five minutes remaining in regulation. The Knights eventually won the game in penalty kicks to set up their match with Johns Hopkins.
“We came out a little too flat,” head coach Nate Wiley said. “Once we got past that first 15 minutes, we settled in and played our game and we were able to come back because of it … we played really well.”
In their game against Johns Hopkins, however, the Knights were simply outmatched. Both team’s abilities were reflected in the 3-1 final score.
“We played a really good team,” Wiley said. “We gave up three goals because they earned three goals. It was the first team we played all year that I walked away saying, ‘They were just better than us.’”
Season-ending losses are always tough. It doesn’t matter if the better team won or the ball bounced the wrong way—it can be hard to move on once the season ends. For this team, however, maturity helped them overcome the loss as a group.
“This group has always had an ability to put things into perspective pretty quickly … they’ve helped me gain [that ability],” Wiley said. “It shows the maturity of this group that they’ve gained over the season that they could recognize … that we didn’t play poorly.”
As a whole, this was the most successful season for the Knights in 20 years. The win over Frostburg State was only Geneseo’s fourth NCAA Tournament win ever—the other three came in 1994 when the Knights went to the Final Four.
Although the Knights will only graduate four seniors this season, they were very important to the team’s success, accounting for six goals and 11 assists.
Arguably most significant, however, is the departure of senior goalkeeper Allison Stamp. Stamp was the most dominant goalie in the SUNYAC this season. She had a .659 goals-against average and a whopping 10 shutouts in conference—both leading the conference by a significant margin.
Despite the departures, the Knights should be in a good position to make a run at another SUNYAC Tournament title next season. Probably the most important returning player will be freshman midfielder/forward Leah Greene. Greene scored two goals against Frostburg State in the NCAA Tournament. More impressively, her 15 goals put her on pace to shatter Logan Hadzicki Blask’s (’04) record of 45 career goals.
The team will welcome the winter break. After that’s over, however, it’s back to work for the 2015 soccer season.
“The next few weeks it’s about making sure classes are sorted out with finals coming up in three weeks,” Wiley said. “Once we come back in January, it’s gonna be … ‘What do we need to do to make next year even better than this year?’”