Columbus State soccer team reaches final four for first time
The Columbus State women's soccer team is headed to the NCAA Division II Final Four for the first time.
The Lady Cougars beat Barry 20 on Sunday afternoon in the national quarterfinals. The match was played at McCown Field on the Carson-Newman campus.
This was CSU's fourth appearance in the quarterfinals, but the Lady Cougars were 03 with losses in 2007, '08 and '14.
"It is so tough to get to this point," CSU coach Jay Entlich said, "and we have been at this point 4 ... times now and never crossed the line.
"Our mantra from Day 1 (was) cross the line. so everyday for the last 3 1/24 months we have been talking about crossing the line. and today, we finally crossed the line."
The Lady Cougars will face Bridgeport (Conn.), which beat East Stroudsburg 20 on Sunday. The semifinals will be at Pensacola at 11 a.m. on Dec. 3 on the West Florida campus. The championship match would be on Dec. 5.
"We have just gotten to the final four, and we're not done," Entlich said. "A lot of teams are kind of just happy getting there. ...
"Nobody cares who comes in second, third or fourth place, so we got to keep going. we got to keep working hard because we are not done yet."
CSU jumped out to an early lead Sunday when Hugrun Elvarsdottir scored her second goal of the season at 9:02. It came off a corner
kick with Mandy Janowitz and Chelsea Person earning the assists.
"It is certainly always nice to get an early goal, but we have been in that situation before ... and we didn't hang on," Entlich said. "So I was really proud of the kids today that they believed that this was our year."
CSU made that one goal lead standup until 75:44 when Nicole Corcione scored her 15th goal of the season. She scored on a rebound after a free kick just outside the box.
Maylyn Parsons stopped all seven shots she faced to pick up the win in net.
Notes: The win was the 18th straight for CSU (2121). ... The win was Entlich's 203rd career win.
This story was originally published November 22, 2015 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Columbus State soccer team reaches final four for first time ."