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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 1997)
Aggies try to score national title Team heads to San Antonio as Big 12 No.l seed Soccer fighting for campus recognition I t is said that anything done more than once at Texas A&M is a tradi tion. If that is the case, then win ning seasons and being ranked in the top ten have become mainstays for the Texas A&M soccer team. The 1997 regular season was no different for the Aggies. A&M fin ished 16-2-0 and ranked 4th in the nation. With the Big 12 Tournament and NCAA National Championship Tournament approaching, the Ag gies are poised to capture their first national championship. The question is not so much if the Aggies can bring home a national ti de, but what it will take to do so. “We need to have determination if we are going to win the national championship. As a team, we work well when we work as one unit and play as a team. In soccer you play well as a team, or you play bad as a team,” Emily Elias said. “If we want it, it’s ours. With 23 excellent ath letes on this team, it can be ours just like that. But everyone needs to want it.” With each passing season, the Aggies improve their record and national standing. Since the incep tion of I t is the world’s oldest game and perhaps its most popular. Millions of people around the world crowd around televi sion sets and into stadiums to wimess a game called football, or as it is referred to in the United States, soccer. For many, soccer is in the blood and hearts stop on Sunday afternoons when their team takes the field. But in this country and on this campus, soccer is often looked upon as a “secondary sport,” which does not often provide the of fensive scoring that people seem to demand. Here in Aggieland, American Football, yes, the kind played on “sacred” Kyle field, flows through the veins of every “true Aggie.” The sport gets so much attention that it is often easy to overlook the hard work the Texas A&M Soccer Team puts in each day. This hard work paid off last weekend when the sixth-ranked Aggies recorded their 42nd- career shutout. The victory gave A&M its first Big 12 title with a 5-0 victory over Colorado. “I can walk around campus and people will come up to me and say, ‘Oh I’ve been to every single game,’ and you know they are re ally great fans,” senior midfielder Sonia Ibanez said. “But there are the other people who don’t even know we exist.” Junior defender Emily Elias said, “It’s a big deal. We were ranked third in the nation, the highest-ranked team at A&M. I think thatfs something that people at this school should be proud of.” The road has been a long and rough one for the Aggies. In 1977, soccer was initiated at A&M in the form of an intercollegiate club team. After many years of success in club and varsity II status, the team was elevated to full varsity status in November 1992. Five years later, the program is thriving. Things have never looked so good for the Aggies. “It’s gotten better over the years. Atten dance improves with every passing season, now the stadium has lights.things keep com ing one by one,” Ibanez said. “It seems like every season we’re stepping up higher. But we’ve really had to do a lot of work to get any kind of recognition.” With the Big 12 championship on their re sume, hopefully that success will transform into larger crowds, more publicity and most importantly, more respect. Despite many advances the Aggies and their loyal fans have made, an attitude of ap athy still exists among many of the 43,000 students at Texas A&M. Many will look at this title and with a short smile and turn of the head and say, “Oh it’s just soccer.” “As much hard work and dedication that every member of this team puts in, it’s not ‘just soccer’,” Elias said. “It’s a full-time job for everyone out here and it is degrading in a way to think that we work our butts off every day to represent the school and some people think a soccer championship has little value.” Is a soccer championship secondary to, say, a football championship? Perhaps foot- ball draws bigger crowds and more national attention, but the soccer teams puts in the same effort in representing this university as the football team does. The soccer team puts so much time and energy into representing the student body of this school, more students could and should take pride in representing them in the stands. “People talk about us more than ever now, but some people only talk about it and don’t come out to fire games,” sophomore goal keeper Melanie Wilson said. “It’s good to come out to games. Some people think it’s boring, but have never really given it a scholarship NCAA Division I soccer at A&M, the Aggies have compiled an amazing 82-17-3 overall record and have only lost three Big 12 con ference games. The Aggies will be the number one seed in the Big 12 Conference tournament which begins today. The tournament will be played at Blos som Stadium in the Blossom Ath letic Complex in San Antonio. As the number one seed, A&M has a first round bye. In the second round, the Aggies will face the win ner of the Texas/Colorado game on Friday at 7:30. The winner moves on to the championship game on Sunday at 1 p.m. to play ei ther Nebraska or the winner of the Iowa State/Baylor game. “The talent is overflowing on this team, it is just a matter of putting it all together for the duration of the post season. I think right now we are in a great setting. We’ve got the Big 12 tournament and then we hit it with the playoffs right then,” Sonia Ibanez said. “This is the perfect time for us. We’ve got momentum, the intensity <f WeVe got momentum, the intensity level is high and we just need to go with it SONIA IBANEZ SENIOR MIDFIELDER level is at a high and we just need to got with it.” A&M entered the tournament as the number two seed last year and reached the championship game. Despite a valiant effort, the team fell to Nebraska in a heartbreaking 1-0 overtime game in Kansas City. “We need to play with a lot of confidence. We need to stay fo cussed on the task at hand,” senior Diana Rowe said. “Like any team, sometimes we can get in a lull when the whole team isn’t fo cussed at the same time. But I think we are passed all that and it’s all coming together.” Pairings for the NCAA tourna ment come out on November 11th. The final four and National Cham pionship game will be played on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from December 5-7. “This team has more talent than any other in A&M soccer history,” senior Bryn Blalack siad. “If we play together and keep our heads straight we can bring home a national championship.” The Aggies are expecting to have home field advantage for two games and possibly a third. Last season the Aggies entered the post season with great expectations, a top ten ranking and home field ad vantage. Unfortunately, the Uni versity of San Diego had different plans when they rolled into the Ag gie Soccer Complex. A&M was up set by the West Coast visitors 5-3 in the first round of the playoffs. “I think this team clicks more on and off the field than the other A&M teams I have played on,” Rowe said. “All the other team’s I have been on in the past three years, nothing was wrong, but it wasnit always off the field that we clicked. I think this team has become more close knit and we all like each other. I really think that our off the field attitude is reflecting on our on the field play.” The team has developed an in credible bond throughout the past four months of playing and training. With nine freshmen on the team, the 1997 squad was starting anew at the start of the season. “The most amazing thing to me about playing soccer on this team is the way we all come together,” Rowe said. Please see Big 12 on Page 4. 16-2: The year in review T chance. They really need to experi ence it. We are a fun team to watch.” Still, 1997 marked the high est attendance the Aggies have ever drawn. With an average of over 1,200 fans, the Aggies had the top attendance in the Cen tral Region and sixth highest in the nation. In September, the Aggies drew close to 1,400 when Big 12 rival Nebraska rolled into College Station. Despite seemingly impressive numbers, a school this size with a soccer team that has had the success of the Aggies, should not be out drawn by universities like Fresno State and Portland that do not have half the en rollment of A&M or the same amount of sup posed school pride. The past five years the Aggies and their fans have seen the program develop into a national powerhouse. The soccer team has only one tradition and that is winning. Beat ing J! Col orado every year is nothing unexpected, the Longhorns have never outscored the Aggies and their Big 12 trophy case is no longer empty. In spite of the fact that many people were disappointed that the Reveille grave sites were moved away from Kyle Field, per haps now she will be able to look a little to the west and catch a glimpse of the Aggie Soccer Complex. Ihe Texas A&M Soccer Team has completed yet another in teresting and successful regu lar season. Their record of 16-2,8-1 was good enough to finish ranked fourth in the nation and seeded first in the Big 12 tournament. Boogie Nights. The season began like no other before it, when the Aggies kicked off the season with the first ever night game at the Aggie Soccer Complex. The lights were installed in an effort to not only pro vide a more comfortable soccer env- iornment, but to draw larger crowds. These expectations soon became realities. The season opener against Oklahoma drew a then record crowd of 1,350 people. The record would even tually be broken when the Aggies defeated Nebraska before a crowd of 1,368. “The fans are great,” senior Diana Rowe said. “I mean, when they get loud, they get really loud.” Attendance continued to rise throughout the season and the season concluded with a record breaking 1,205 average per home game. In the beginning. The Aggies dominated in their first nine games, outscoring opponents 27-5. Two of those victories came against ranked oppo nents Stanford and Nebraska. Only two of the games, though, were on the road. The Aggies used the home- field advantage to improve on their pre season ranking of eight to an all-time high number three in the nation. During the nine game span, the Aggies captured five conference victories. On the road again. A&M began its four week, seven game road trip with the Adidas Soccer Classic Tournament in Houston. A game which pitted them against the number one team in the nation, North Carolina, gave the team hopes of becoming the top ranked squad in the nation. The then third ranked Aggies never lost sight of their goal of winning the Big 12 Championship and focussed on the first game of the tournament against Oklahoma State. The team cruised against the Cow boys and prepared for the game against na tional powerhouse North Carolina. Before a record neutral crowd of5,400, the Aggies valiantly battled the Tarheels, but came up on the short end of a 2-1 game. Still, the Aggies kept up with their high ly touted opponent and the day could just as easily belonged to them. The North Carolina game proved more costly to the Aggies, though. In the second half of the game, sophomore defender Ashley Fendley suffered a season-ending injury to her ACL. Elizabeth Pavlas, a freshman, was called upon to replace the injured Fendley. Please see Season on Page 4.