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.