SAN ANTONIO – The Trinity University Tigers won their 10th consecutive Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) Championship but the Southwestern University Pirates made it everything but inevitable.
Trinity managed to outshoot Southwestern 16-3 but Pirates' goalie Mary Cardone was magnificent, stopping six of the Tigers' seven shots on goal.
"Mary made five or six unbelievable saves, doing what she could to keep us truly in the match," Head Coach Linda Hamilton said. "They outshot us but we weren't in a game where we were holding on for dear life; we were competitive."
The Pirates defense bent but didn't break for most of match, surrendering seven first-half shots to Trinity but giving up only one corner kick. Unfortunately, it was one too many, giving the Tigers the lone goal of the match on a corner kick from Lindsey Peng to SCAC Offensive Player of the Year Chelsea Cole at the 24:59 mark.
"We didn't mark up the back post as well as we needed to and Chelsea Cole, who's obviously a great player, found a little space and put the ball in," Hamilton said.
Southwestern settled in after that and started to find some counters and opportunities, gaining a few possessions, creating three shots, and placing the ball into threatening positions with three second-half corner kicks.
"I'm really proud of the team's competitiveness," Hamilton said. "Winning yesterday against Dallas to get three in a row over them isn't easy. We performed well under pressure all weekend and I'm really proud of how far the team has come this season."
The Pirates finished the season 11-6-0 and 8-3-0 in conference play, earning the second seed in the conference tournament; a gigantic improvement from last year's 3-12-2 season. Trinity improves to 16-1-1.