The 19th-ranked Westminster women’s soccer team faces No. 14 Northwood in the opening round of the 2014 NAIA Women’s Soccer National Championship on Saturday. Westminster will be playing in the National Championship for the second straight season and third time in the past four seasons.
Saturday’s game will be played at Arrigo-Vecellio Soccer Field in West Palm Beach, Florida. The start time for the game will be announced later this week. The Griffins are unseeded in the 32-team field, while Northwood enters as the No. 15 seed. The winner advances to the final site at the Orange Beach Sportsplex in Orange Beach, Alabama. where it faces the winner between No. 2-seed William Carey and Our Lady of the Lake on Dec. 2 at 10 a.m. MT.
Westminster qualified for the NAIA National Championship by virtue of winning the Frontier/North Star Conference Tournament. The Griffins head to Florida at 15-3-2 on the season and riding a four-game winning streak. They defeated Carroll, 2-1, in the tournament semifinals and then took a 2-1 overtime victory over Rocky Mountain for the title.
The Griffins have scored 43 goals this season for an average of 2.15 goals per game. They have scored at least one goal in six straight games and in 19 of the 20 games they have played this season. The team is taking 15.2 shots per contest, and it gets 54.9 percent of those attempts on goal. Westminster scores a goal on every 7.1 shots it takes while recording 28 assists on the year.
Westminster sits tied for 13th in the NAIA by allowing just 0.60 goals per game and is 18th in the country with 10 shutouts. Griffin opponents only attempt 6.7 shots per game, and they score a goal on every 11.1 shots taken. The Griffins have only given up two goals in a game twice during the year, but they haven’t posted a shutout since Oct. 19, at Carroll, a span of four games.
Rylei North leads the team and ranks 31st in the country with her school-record 15 goals this season. She also has two assists for a team-best 32 points while taking 79 shots and putting 52 of them on goal. Lexi Tucker has scored nine goals with four assists while Madison Roemer has added five goals. Nicole Carter leads the team with seven assists.
Abi Yanke has played all but 53 minutes the team has played in goal, and she is 15th in the country with a 0.60 goals-against-average. Yanke has a new school-record 15 wins with 54 saves and .818 save percentage and eight shutouts.
Northwood will be making its ninth appearance at the National Championship on Saturday. Northwood qualified for this year’s field by winning The Sun Conference Tournament. The Seahawks are one of the hottest teams in the country after going 14-1-1 since a 1-0 loss to Oklahoma Baptist on Sept. 6. The lone loss during the span came to No. 1 Embry-Riddle on Nov. 5.
The team is fourth in the country with 73 goals and averages 3.48 goals per game — ninth in the NAIA. The Seahawks have a NAIA-best 66 assists during the year while taking 18.05 shots per outing. Johanna Engberg leads the team and ranks fourth in the nation with 26 goals, including a NAIA-best eight game-winning goals. She has also tallied 12 assists to place fourth in the country with 64 points.
Westminster enters the National Championship at 8-4-2 all-time in postseason play after a pair of wins at the Frontier/North Star Tournament. The Griffins are 0-1-1 in their previous trips to the National Championship after playing Westmont to a 2-2 draw last season before being eliminated in penalties. The first appearance was a 1-0 loss at Concordia in 2011.
Westminster and Northwood have met one time previously. That meeting was a 2-1 overtime victory by Northwood on Sept. 4, 2010, in Flordia, in which the Seahawks scored less than a minute into the start of overtime. The Griffins were out-shot, 22-7, in that game and only recorded two shots on goal.