After one final weekend of tournament play, the Florida State Seminoles have been crowned the National Champions. The final weekend of women’s soccer for the 2014 season saw the Seminoles defeat the Stanford Cardinal on Friday evening before triumphing over the Virginia Cavaliers in Sunday afternoon’s National Championship game. After a grueling season, the National Champion has finally been crowned; let’s take a look at how the final weekend went down.
Friday evening saw the first match take place between the Virginia Cavaliers and the Texas A&M Aggies. All of the superstars showed up for this match and it took less than 13 minutes to find the first goal. Makenzy Doniak struck first for the Cavaliers off of a header that came from a beautifully floated pass from Morgan Brian, which dissected the Aggies defense. The Aggies struggled to cope with the overwhelming Cavaliers attack, but managed to find an equalizer with 13 minutes remaining in the first half. Kelley Monogue pounced on a failed clearance from the Virginia defense and placed a perfect shot out of reach of Morgan Stearns to level the score at 1-1.
Virginia would find the winning goal just before the halftime break thanks to Emily Sonnet heading home a deflected corner kick. The 2-1 deficit would increase late in the second half when Alexis Shaffer displayed some dazzling dribbling ability to create space between herself and two defenders, before she delivered a fantastic finish to give Virginia the 3-1 win. The victory earned the Cavaliers their spot in National Championship game, where they would face conference rivals, the Florida State Seminoles.
The second match of the night pitted the Stanford Cardinal against the Florida State Seminoles, and Cheyna Williams was the star of the show. Just moments after Carson Pickett hit the crossbar with a 30-yard effort, Williams struck for the first time. She collected a pass from Michaela Hahn and took a fantastic touch to create space before smashing a majestic shot into the top corner of the goal to open the scoring for the Seminoles. Stanford’s best opportunity came moments into the second half when Chioma Ubogagu beat goalkeeper Cassie Miller, but was cleared off of the goal line by Kristin Crowley. It was one of only three shots that the Cardinal had all game. Williams then struck again with 3 minutes left in the match, latching onto a Jamia Fields pass before rounding the keeper and finishing calmly to make the score 2-0.
The National Championship Game featured the highest scoring team in the nation the Virginia Cavaliers against the Florida State Seminoles, who have not conceded a goal during the entire College Cup. That trend did not change for the Seminoles, and they earned a difficult 1-0 victory over the Virginia Cavaliers. The match was a tightly contested defensive battle between the two teams that did not see a shot on goal for the first 80 minutes. The first shot on goal came with less than nine minutes remaining in the match when Megan Campbell had her free kick pushed wide by Virginia keeper Morgan Stearns. One minute later, Cheyna Williams laid a pass onto Jamia Fields who unleashed a ferocious left footed shot after beating three defenders for the only goal of the match.
The victory gave the Florida State Seminoles their first National Championship in their program’s history. Their impressive finish to the tournament produced the same score line as their ACC Championship victory over the Cavaliers. It was the third time the Seminoles defeated Virginia this season, proving once again that it was no fluke victory.
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