Wednesday, November 5, 2014

PORTLAND, Ore. – The stage is set for the four teams playing in the 2014 GNAC Women’s Soccer Championships held at the Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila, Wash., Thursday and Saturday.

Western Washington sealed the No. 1 seed a few weeks ago, claiming its third regular season championship in as many years.

Montana State Billings locked up the two seed with its win over Northwest Nazarene on Saturday and Seattle Pacific earned the third seed with two wins over Western Oregon and Central Washington last week.

With its win on Thursday, the Wildcats earned the fourth-seed, reaching the championship tournament for the second year in a row.

Seattle Pacific and Montana State Billings will play the first match of the day at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The Wildcats and the Vikings battle at 7 p.m.

The winners of these two games will play in the championship on Saturday at 1 p.m. The GNAC champion will receive an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.

All three games of the women’s soccer championship can be viewed live on GNAC.TV and the tournament program is available here.

For the third year in a row, Sebastian Moraga will be handling the play-by-play duties for the tournament.

Tickets for the championship can be purchased the Starfire Sports Complex or online to the link at the right-hand side of the page under “Related Links.”

Also, the brackets for the NCAA tournament will be released Monday, Nov. 10 at 4 p.m. at NCAA.com and the NCAA West Regional will begin next Thursday and Friday.

Western Washington is currently ranked second and Seattle Pacific is ranked ninth in the NCAA West Region poll which decides the six teams that will make the West Regionals.

Other Notes:

• Western Washington has a streak of 56 consecutive games without allowing more than one goal in regulation. The last time the Vikings gave up more than one goal in regulation was a 2-1 loss to Seattle Pacific in 2012.

• Lexi Fesenbek set a new Northwest Nazarene single-season record for assists with 12 in her last game in 2014.

• The 2014 women’s soccer NCAA tournament bracket will be released Monday, Nov. 10 at 4 p.m. on NCAA.com.
   
• Chelsea Shuman of Montana State Billings and Hannah Huesers of Seattle Pacific shared GNAC offensive Player of the Week honors while GNAC Defensive Player of the Year Kim Cooper from Western Washington was selected as the defensive Player of the Week.