The “other” women’s college soccer team in town

I was surprised by an article in Friday’s Oregonian covering the Concordia University women’s soccer team. They compete in the NAIA division, and because of that I can somewhat understand why I have never heard about that team. But the following quote in the article caught my eye and made me wonder how such a successful program could remain such a secret:

The Cavaliers are the north side's other great women's soccer program, but since they function in the formidable shadow of NCAA power broker University of Portland, they're a little harder to see. Within their own venue, though, their production has been at least as good as the Pilots. Since the 2000 season, when Concordia reached the NAIA regionals for the first time, the Cavaliers have gone 182-26-15. Portland is 180-29-11.

Since a pinched nerve has kept me around home this week rather than in the Sierras on a backpack as I had planned, I decided to drop by their match today. They are ranked #2 in the nation, and they were playing the #1 team. They play at Strasser Field in Delta Park, an artificial turf field with bleachers. The players are primarily from OR, WA, & ID, with a couple from CO tossed in the mix.

It was an entertaining match and those top teams looked fairly evenly matched on the field. Unfortunately the Caveliers didn’t fare any better on the scoreboard than the Pilots did yesterday, bowing to the #1 team 3-0. But now that I am aware of them, I likely will drop in on them again.

I was there, too, drawn by the Oregonian story and the good afternoon weather. NAIA vs NCAA is an interesting comparison. Condordia could not compete versus Pilots in overall team spped, conditioning and possession game as I see it. But the quality of play was good and the teams evenly matched. Cavaliers played too direct a game, in my opinion, and the Cal Baptist defense stood tall and strong to reject every try. Concordia Cavaliers seemed to come up short by one pass when trying to mount an attack. The Lancers showed more speed up front and launched three excellent goals, one on a strong header off a corner. Looks like Concordia still has work to do in pursuit of a national championship.

The two most obvious differences between the Cavaliers and the Pilots that I noticed were:

1) fewer players in the offensive half of the field when the Cavaliers attacked; some players had definite boundaries on how far they were supposed to move forward; so some players, even if they had the ball and were unmarked and had a clear field ahead of them, would pass off rather than continue to advance the ball; this resulted in fewer offensive targets in the offensive half of the field (coming up short by one pass)
2) no one created the excitement such as Enyeart on the attack does

Since they were rather evenly matched against Cal Baptist, some of the other differences that Purple Haze mentioned were not so obvious.

Think of all the young ladies who can continue to play soccer because of this and other levels of college competition.

And related to our upcoming opponent, Oregon State, I noted the following comment in the original article in The Oregonian:

At the beginning of this season the Cavaliers got together for a "friendly" exhibition with Division I Portland State -- and beat the Vikings 1-0 in a 75-minute game. That's the same PSU team that beat Oregon State.

While waiting for the game to start, I strolled by the nearby soccer fields. I noticed some co-ed games being played. The games were intermural (NOT intramural) co-ed soccer between various grades of PIL schools. Frosh & sophs compete in one bracket, juniors & seniors in another. There is a minimum # of girls that must be involved. I think there must be at least 5 girls on the field at all times. This allows those kids who, for one reason or another, can not or choose not to compete on the varsity teams. This allows both boys and girls to continue playing soccer past middle school. I was quite impressed.

UPWomenSoccerRookie wrote:
While waiting for the game to start, I strolled by the nearby soccer fields. I noticed some co-ed games being played. The games were intermural (NOT intramural) co-ed soccer between various grades of PIL schools. Frosh & sophs compete in one bracket, juniors & seniors in another. There is a minimum # of girls that must be involved. I think there must be at least 5 girls on the field at all times. This allows those kids who, for one reason or another, can not or choose not to compete on the varsity teams. This allows both boys and girls to continue playing soccer past middle school. I was quite impressed.

What you saw was the high school recreational soccer program. You are correct about the organization and it is indeed a wonderful opportunity for non-competitive high school players to continue to enjoy the game. The games are usually fairly casual but there are a few players with good skills as well.

Concordia got hit a bit for their loss. I'm not clear on why losing to #1 drops you below teams with multiple losses, but I'm a simple guy.

I haven't taken the time to look into this particular poll specifically, but I do have some experience with NAIA polls... a lot of NAIA teams play "up" against NCAA DII and DIII teams. So sometimes a good loss against a much larger school counts more than a win over a tiny school. You'll see teams with losing records in Top 25 polls often. It's just the way the NAIA works.

Stonehouse wrote:I haven't taken the time to look into this particular poll specifically, but I do have some experience with NAIA polls... a lot of NAIA teams play "up" against NCAA DII and DIII teams. So sometimes a good loss against a much larger school counts more than a win over a tiny school. You'll see teams with losing records in Top 25 polls often. It's just the way the NAIA works.

OK, but even if those 2 loss teams had one loss to Cal Baptist, they had another loss. and they were ranked below Concordia before the weekend, so not a lot could have changed.

So- are you saying if you play up and loose you should leapfrog a team that lost to #1 in the division in which you are ranked?

By that standard a team could schedule the D1 top ten, loose every game, and be #1.

Like I said - way too complicated for me.

Headed over to Strasser Field yesterday evening to watch the NAIA match between Portland’s #5 Concordia & #8 Simon Fraser of BC.

The match opened with both the Canadian & US national anthems (Sophie would have felt at home).

From the opening kickoff Concordia put together a nice series of passes, better than any sequence I had seen when they played #1 Cal Baptist. Had they improved that much? Or was their opponent less of a challenge? But that opening flurry was the pinnacle of passing for Concordia. The match was primarily a defensive battle that went into overtime. Concordia won it with a golden goal in the 1st overtime period. They are now 12-1 for the season.

It was an entertaining and well-matched contest. Here is the link to the write-up from the Concordia web site: http://www.gocugo.com/ndetail.cfm?news_id=5988

Concordia wins today to move on the their NAIA sweet 16

http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=125894039652711800

I watched the Cavs on Saturday. I had planned to watch the finals of the girls’ 6A high school soccer match that evening & figured I could catch the Cavs in a later round. But when I checked the NAIA website I found that the final 4 rounds of the tourney are held at a site in Alabama. So I changed my priorities and watched their entire game.

I wore the same clothes that I had worn to the Pilots game on Friday night. I was warm & toasty on Friday but a sharp wind in the face kept me chilly on Sat.

I sat next to the Cavs coach’s dad and picked up several tidbits of program lore. They are a relatively young team so the prospects for next year are good.

The write-up says Ms. Tebbs scored in the 29th, 45th, & 90th minutes. Actually her 2nd score was in the 46th minute. So she scored about 35 seconds into the 2nd half & then again with about 35 seconds left in the game.

Then I headed to the west side of town to catch the remainder of the Jesuit – Westview game. The 15 minutes of the 1st half that saw looked even, 0-0, but the Crusaders turned it up in the second half to dominate & win 2-0. UP recruit Sarah Bridges was chosen her team’s player of the match.

The unfortunate thing about this soccer-filled weekend is that it marked the last games played locally this season at all 3 levels. Downer.

UPWomenSoccerRookie wrote: The unfortunate thing about this soccer-filled weekend is that it marked the last games played locally this season at all 3 levels. Downer.

The Pilot men will take a different view on that. IfWhen they beat Virginia on the road Sunday they might get the quarterfinal at home.

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:
The Pilot men will take a different view on that. IfWhen they beat Virginia on the road Sunday they might get the quarterfinal at home.

I'd like to think that this is a possibility, but I doubt it. If they win Sunday, they will get Harvard or Maryland. Harvard is seeded, so they would surely get the home field, and Maryland looks like they had home field in the first round, so they would probably be a higher seed than the Pilots.

reality folks.

Maryland was 12 RPI the last week.

UP was in the mid 40's.

No way we made up that gap.

We will go to College Park if we beat Virginia and MD wins. It's worse if Harvard wins. We will go to Boston.

Let's just worry about beating Virginia for now...

Boston is worse? No way. It's a great city.

But, agreed with the Geez. One game at a time. First beat Virginia.

I headed over to Concordia University Friday afternoon to watch the televised NAIA semi-final soccer match between #6 Concordia and defending champion and #2 Lee. Concordia had won its 1st 3 matches in the tourney, including avenging one of its two regular season losses.

The last 4 rounds of the tournament are played in Alabama during this week. There was lots of rain and a very sloppy field for the first 2 of those rounds. For the semis, it was not raining but the field was still water-logged. There were a couple of places that had been reinforced with sand, which made them dead spots. But the biggest issue today was cold. It was below 40 degrees, with a chance of snow flurries (I THOUGHT they said it was Alabama!).

Lee dominated the first half and took a 1-0 lead. Concordia came out and played much more aggressively in the second half. Unfortunately they couldn’t score, and lost 1-0. It was an exciting game to watch. Lee has some very good players. Concordia played a good game, by far the most aggressive game of theirs that I have seen. They had more shots on goal, including one off the goalpost, another off the crossbar. They were certainly in the match. They improved a great deal from when I first watched them and made my first post on this topic. They finished their season 21-3-0 and won their conference playoff. They lose only three seniors, so they should be strong & fun to watch next year.

Link to CU website

Two players voted to the 1st team, four given honorable mention.

In my previous post regarding the national semi-final game between Concordia and Lee, which earned its 2nd consecutive national title, I mentioned that Lee had some good players. In fact they filled several spots on the All-America teams: three players on the 1st team, including the national player of the year, two players on the 2nd team, and one player on the 3rd team.

Article on CU website.