Stanislaus women elated, surprised by at-large NCAA soccer bid

Just about the time that the Cal State Stanislaus women’s soccer team was starting to think about packing its boots for the off-season, it got the best possible news.

The Warriors, who thought their chances to reach the NCAA Division II tournament were nil, were awarded a berth in the West Regional on Monday and will battle Seattle Pacific (12-4-3) on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Western Washington University in Bellingham. The winner of Thursday’s game meets host and top-seeded Western Washington (16-0-4) Saturday at 1 p.m.

Stanislaus (13-4-1) was ranked No. 5 in the West Region and No. 24 in the nation in the most recent poll, but received the No. 4 regional seed. As lower-seeded teams in other conferences stepped up to claim automatic berths by winning conference tournaments, the Warriors – who didn’t qualify for their own conference tourney – continued to practice for a very uncertain future opponent.

“I told our team our chances were about 10 percent,” said coach Gabe Bolton. “But the whole time the CCAA Tournament was going on we still were practicing and I told the team to to believe we were in and to prepare for playing., so we’ve taken that approach the past two weeks.”

Stanislaus has not played since closing the regular season Oct. 30 with a 2-0 home field victory over Cal State East Bay. So while there’s chance the Warriors might be rusty after a two-week layoff, Bolton sees nothing but positives.

“A lot of our players who were banged-up through the year are back to 100 percent,” Bolton said. “There’s no question that we’re well-rested and in a good position because we haven’t been battling and getting beaten up in matches. Also, because we haven’t known who our next opponent might be, we’ve been able to focus entirely on us and what we need to do to get better. These two weeks have been great.”

In choosing Stanislaus, the NCAA committee essentially rewarded the Warriors for an entire season of excellent play as well as for playing a strong non-conference schedule. In doing so, it had to upset two quality conference teams – CCAA tourney runner-up Chico State (12-5-2) and Cal State San Bernardino (14-4-1) – by leaving them out of the regional field.

“It was rough for us to not get into the conference tournament,” Bolton said. “But as I told the team, the CCAA Tournament is about your body of work in 11 conference games, while the NCAA Tournament is about the whole season, and we played just about the toughest schedule you can play.

“There’s no question our team is deserving of this at-large bid.”

This story was originally published November 10, 2014 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Stanislaus women elated, surprised by at-large NCAA soccer bid."