Breakout season leads to 1st D-III final four
Two years ago, the Wesleyan women’s soccer team sat in the school’s athletic center, watching the Division III NCAA tournament selection show and hoping that the Cardinals’ 9-5-2 record would be good enough for an at-large bid. It wasn’t.
“Team by team gets announced, another one gets announced, it gets to be the last four teams and we were like, ‘OK, we probably didn’t make it,’” said Julia Meehan, a senior defender from Farmington. “Once it finished, people didn’t say anything. We just packed up and were like, ‘All right, guess that’s it for this year.’”
The Cardinals have come a long way since then. Not only did they make it to their first NCAA Division III women’s soccer tournament this year, they made it to the final four and will play No.
1 College of New Jersey in the national semifinal game in Greensboro, North Carolina on Friday at 1:45 p.m.
“At the beginning of the year, we all knew the talent we had on this team and the depth we had,” Meehan said. “We knew we would be good, but we didn’t know we would be this good.”
Wesleyan (18-1-2) got an at-large bid (they weren’t worried this time) after losing to Middlebury in overtime on penalty kicks in the NESCAC championship. Since then, the Cardinals won their first NCAA tournament game against Penn State Behrend, 1-0, then proceeded to beat Stevens in the second round, No. 2-ranked Johns Hopkins in the third round and No. 8 MIT 2-1 in overtime in the NCAA quarterfinals on Nov. 13.
The Cardinals are led by Meehan, Grace Devanny, Sarah Hammond and Emily Ribatt, who were all named All-region by the United Soccer Soccer Coaches on Monday afternoon. Devanny, the 2021 NESCAC Player of the Year, was also named a First Team All-american on Wednesday. She leads the Cardinals with 12 goals and nine assists for 33 points in 21 games.
The path to success started a few years ago. The 2019 season was Wesleyan’s best since 2011.
“I think we were good already then, but we had just started to learn to win more consistently,” Wesleyan coach Eva Meredith said. “That’s a big hurdle. We took the first steps in 2018 and 2019.”
Last year, they did not play due to COVID-19. They were allowed to practice with coaches in the spring, something the NESCAC does not normally allow.
“It was challenging,” Meredith said. “But this past spring, we got to actually develop some players, having more time and no competition. During the season, it’s prepping for the next game and individual player development takes a back seat. I think we came a long ways in the spring.
“That had something to do with it. I think we also had a really talented group that is all coming together.”
The Cardinals beat Keene State 7-0 in their first game on Sept. 8. Their only loss came to No. 20 Amherst, 1-0, on Oct. 9. In the first round of the NESCAC tournament, Wesleyan beat Bowdoin 2-1. It was their first NESCAC tournament win since 2012.
The NESCAC final was recorded as a 1-1 tie, but penalty kicks were allowed to determine the league champion. Middlebury won its second title in three seasons on penalty kicks, 3-2.
“We hadn’t lost a game in a while, we hadn’t gone to overtime in a while,” Meehan said. “We hadn’t gone to penalty kicks ever, so it was a time to notice what we could work on. We all came out of that game like, ‘We never want to lose like that again.’”
Meehan has missed just one game in her four-year career, entering the final four weekend as Wesleyan’s all-time leader in games played (67). She originally decided not to play soccer in college and went to the University of Virginia. By the middle of her freshman year, she realized she missed it and started to look into transferring to one of the NESCAC schools. Wesleyan hadn’t seen her play but gave her a chance.
“I’m super appreciative,” she said. “The team was in a rebuilding transition. They were willing to take a chance on me.”
They won one conference game her first year, in 2017, and went 6-8-1. They’ve been improving ever since.
“Since then, we’ve been in an uphill trajectory,” Meehan said. “This is our first NCAA tournament so it wasn’t expected by any means to do this well and make it to the final four.”