By Grace Pohl
Staff Intern 

Eastern Washington soccer makes more history in 2017

 

Last updated 1/4/2018 at 3:12pm

EWU's soccer team won a second consecutive Big Sky Conference championship, and a trip to the NCAA tournament.

The Eastern Washington University women's soccer team made history all over the board during the 2017 season. Eastern earned a bid into the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row after its second straight Big Sky Championship.

Eastern was seeded No. 14 heading into the NCAA Tournament and played No. 3 Southern California for the second-straight year. Chloe Williams scored in the sixth minute to put EWU in the lead, but ended up falling 2-1 in double overtime against the defending national champions.

After finding so much success on the field, Eastern was crowned the Big Sky regular season champions, going 8-1-1 in the conference, which led to EWU hosting the Big Sky Championships for the second year in a row.

Due to poor field conditions at regular season champions University of Idaho, Eastern hosted the tournament that led to a first-ever Big Sky title in 2016.

Home field advantage seemed to help out the Eagles again. After receiving a first round bye, EWU beat Portland State 2-1 in the semifinals and went on to defeat Northern Colorado 3-0 in the championship game to earn a berth in the tournament.

Three Eastern student-athletes were named to the All-Big Sky tournament team including Alexis Stephenson, Jenny Chavez and Savannah Hoekstra. Chloe Williams was honored with the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

This success was nothing new to head coach Chad Bodner as it was his fourth appearance in as many years and he has compiled a 4-2-1 record so far in Big Sky postseason play.

The Eagles finished with a program best record of 16-6-1 and went unbeaten for 11 games, which is now a school history mark. The team also holds the longest unbeaten streak at home with 10 games in a row, the most since the 2015 season.

Some notable wins for the Eagles were against Gonzaga for the first time since 2002, their first Ivy League Victory at Cornell and a win over Northern Colorado which had not happened since 2008.

The Eagles will lose 10 seniors after the 2017 campaign, including the prolific Lewis and Clark High School graduate Williams.

Williams entered the season only needing seven goals and six points to break a handful of Big Sky all-time career records. She earned the all-time career points title in a 3-2 win against Fairleigh Dickinson on Sept. 17. She went on to break the all-time career goals record at Idaho State on Oct. 20. Williams ended her successful career with 44 goals and 109 points.

During 2017, she scored 12 goals and earned 27 points while starting in all 23 games. With her successful resume, Williams was named the Big Sky Offensive Player of the year for a third-straight season, making her the first player to ever earn the honor three times. She was also selected four times to the All-Big Sky first team selection, which is the first time for an EWU soccer player and also just the third person to accomplish it in Big Sky history.

The soccer team has a long offseason, as they will most likely make the return back to competition in August 2018 with no official schedule released yet.

Grace Pohl can be reached grace@cheneyfreepress.com.

 

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