Williams Overcomes Amherst in Overtime, 3-2, for Women's Soccer Title

Courtesy Williams Sports Information

Box Score

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Junior Sarah Walmsley placed a shot off the outstretched hands of Amherst goalkeeper Allie Horwitz just 2:38 into overtime Sunday, lifting top-seeded Williams to the 2008 NESCAC Women's Soccer Championship.

Walmsley’s goal gave the Ephs their second-straight NESCAC title, and Williams became the first team in tournament history to win back-to-back championships. Williams improved to 16-0-1 on the season, while the Lord Jeffs fell to 11-2-3.

Amherst absorbed a tremendous opening 20 minutes from Williams to score twice within a 8:30 span and take a 2-1 lead into halftime. Much like the two teams first meeting on Oct. 25 — it ended in a 1-1 tie — the Ephs spent most of the second half working to knot the game at two.

That moment did not come until 4:01 remained. Williams senior Gabrielle Woodson found herself with the ball in the box off a scramble in front of the net and tapped a shot into the lower left-corner that just eluded Horwitz and two Lord Jeff defenders. It was Woodson’s team-leading 12th goal of the season.

The overtime lasted just over two minutes. Woodson played a ball from the top of the box toward Walmsley. The ball glanced off Amherst defender Jill Kochanek and landed at the feet of the Eph junior, who turned and fired a shot to the lower right-corner. A diving Horwitz was able to get a hand on the ball, but not enough to deflect it out of the goal.

Williams held a 26-16 shot advantage in the contest, while Amherst took four corner kicks to the Ephs’ three. Horwitz finished with eight saves for the Lord Jeffs, while Eph keeper Lauren Sinnenberg stopped seven shots.

Williams came out strong and scored just 17:29 into the contest on junior Brianna Wolfson’s fifth goal of the tournament.

However, Amherst countered just over five minutes later on a rebound strike from junior Meg Murphy. Sophomore Kyla Woodhouse played a ball in from the right wing and Murphy was there to pounce on the opportunity, volleying a hard shot past Sinnenberg for her 11th goal of the season.

The equalizer energized an Amherst team that had faced constant pressure up to that point, and swung momentum in the Jeffs favor. It was just over eight minutes later before that momentum capped with another Amherst score. Murphy found sophomore Jackie Hirsch this time for a composed shot to the lower left corner from just eight yards out.

The NESCAC championship was the third for Williams. The Ephs also won in 2004 and 2007.

2008 NESCAC WOMEN’S SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP
Quarterfinals - Sunday, November 2 at Higher Seeds
at No. 1 Williams 4, No. 8 Colby 0
at No. 2 Amherst 1, No. 7 Wesleyan 0
at No. 3 Middlebury 2, No. 6 Trinity 0
No. 5 Bowdoin 0, at No. 4 Tufts 0 - 2OT
Bowdoin advances on Penalty Kicks, 4-2

Semifinals - Saturday, November 8 at Williams
at No. 1 Williams 6, No. 5 Bowdoin 0
No. 2 Amherst 1, No. 3 Middlebury 0

Championship - Sunday, November 9 at Williams
at No. 1 Williams 3, No. 2 Amherst 2 - OT

2008 NESCAC WOMEN'S SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP

Quarterfinals - Sunday, November 2 at Higher Seeds
12:30 p.m.
No. 8 at No. 1
No. 7 at No. 2
No. 6 at No. 3
No. 5 at No. 4

Semifinals - Saturday, November 8 at Highest Remaining Seed
11:00 a.m./1:30 p.m.
  Highest Remaining Seed vs. Lowest Remaining Seed
Remaining First Round Winners

Championship - Sunday, November 9
Semifinal Winners - 12:00 p.m.

Format
The top eight teams in the conference will qualify for the NESCAC Women's Soccer Championship.  Quarterfinal games will be conducted on Sunday, November 2, 2008 with the semifinals and championship games conducted on Saturday, November 8 and Sunday, November 9, respectively.  The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. 

Seeding
Seeding will be based on final conference standings of round robin play. Standings will be based on team winning percentages. Ties shall count as half a win.

The 8th seed will play at the 1st seed, the 7th seed will play at the 2nd seed, the 6th seed will play at the 3rd seed, and the 5th seed will play at the 4th seed.  Teams will be re-bracketed after first round games and the lowest remaining seed will face the highest remaining seed.

Pairings
Pairings will be announced Friday, October 31.

Tie Breaking Procedures
Ties will be broken as follows:

Head-to-head result (if teams play each other more than once during the regular season, the game that appears on the league schedule will be the game that is counted).

If teams tied during the regular season, or there is a 3-way or more tie, the following tie breaking procedure will be used:

• Best record among tying teams, against one another (head-to-head).
• Most conference wins (in games that are part of the conference schedule and count toward league standings).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 4 teams (including all teams at the 4th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 8 teams (including all teams at the 8th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against conference teams in rank order.
• Comparisons shall be made one team at a time starting with the highest ranked team.
• If the tie remains after comparing results against the highest ranked team, the results against the next team in rank order shall be used. This process is continued until a winner is determined.
• Coin flip (or similar random action involving all tied teams).

Note: In case of ties among three or more schools, the criteria above will be applied in order until a team is (or teams are) separated.  At that point, the process begins anew (returning to the first criteria) with the remaining teams.  The process is continued until the tie is eventually broken.  In cases where only a random action will break the tie of three or more teams, the random action will be applied to all teams involved in the tie.  For example, if three teams are tied and only a random action (pulling names out of a hat) will break the tie, each name will be pulled and seeded in order of being pulled.  Also, in the event that there are two (or more) groups of teams tied at different spots in the standings and the only criteria left that can be used to break those ties is a coin flip/random action, the coin flip/random action used to break the tie of one group (to put teams in rank order) will not affect the tie breaking procedures of the other group(s) of tied teams.