ST. PAUL, MINN. – It all comes down to this. For the second consecutive season, the St. Catherine University soccer team finds itself in the thick of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) playoff hunt. Just like 2015, the Wildcats will face Concordia College in the final game of the regular season with a trip to the conference postseason tournament on the line.
This will be the second straight season St. Kate's and Concordia will meet in the final game of the regular season, and the stakes are just as high as they were in 2015. Last season, the Wildcats knocked the Cobbers out of the playoff hunt with a 1-0 shutout victory at home and subsequently qualified for the MIAC Tournament for the first time in program history.
This season, the situation is a little different for both St. Kate's and Concordia. The Wildcats will need to beat the Cobbers, who have already been eliminated from the postseason picture, on the road Saturday in order to qualify for the MIAC tournament.
Live stats will be available for the game, which will start at 1 p.m. in Morehead, Minnesota, and scoring updates will be made on St. Kate's official Twitter page (@stkateswildcats).
Now, here are the five things to know before kickoff Saturday:
5 – The Wildcats are currently tied for fifth place with the College of Saint Benedict in the MIAC standings with 16 total points. Both teams have a 5-4-1 record in conference play and have a two point lead over Macalester, who sits in seventh place with 14 points.
3 – If St. Kate's beats Concordia on Saturday, it earns three points in the conference standings. Those three points would secure the Wildcats playoff berth to the MIAC tournament as the fifth or sixth seed, depending what happens in other games around the conference.
5 – St. Kate's scored a barrage of goals in a 5-0 win over Saint Mary's University on Wednesday.
Brittany Kollman (Fergus Falls, Minn. / Kennedy Secondary) had the first multi-goal game of her career while
Kaitlin Machovec (Woodbury, Minn. / North St. Paul) continued her strong offensive week with a goal and an assist. Two seniors,
Julia Zyla (Inver Grove Heights, Minn. / Trinity) and
Kelly Molitor (Lakeville, Minn. / Lakeville South) also scored goals in the final home game of their careers with St. Kate's.
29 – With her assist on Zyla's goal, senior forward
Hannah Okerstrom (Bayport, Minn. / Stillwater) tied her own school record for points in a single season. Okerstrom's 12 goals and 4 assists this season give her 29 total points, which ties the record she set as a junior last season.
0 – Junior goalkeeper
Jessica Perez-Adame (San Jacinto, Calif. / San Jacinto) has not given up a goal this season. In 186:46 minutes of work, Perez-Adame has face eight shots and made eight saves to preserve two shutout victories for the Wildcats this season.