In the waning minutes of Western Washington University’s women’s soccer national championship game against undefeated West Chester, freshman forward Claire Potter cracked a shot over WCU’s All-American goalkeeper, sealing the Vikings’ second title in program history.
Exactly six years before that moment, on Dec. 3, 2016, junior forward Emily Webster clinched Western’s first title on a belter of a free kick with less than 15 minutes remaining in a 2-2 game. Webster placed the Vikings — and the 2016 team — in soccer immortality.
The 2022 Vikings now share in that pleasure, or relief, of winning a national championship. As the offseason progresses, the accolades continue to pour in for the team.
On Monday, Dec. 12, senior midfielder Tera Ziemer won the United Soccer Coaches NCAA Division II National Player of the Year award. Ziemer, a transfer from Texas A&M University who played in every minute of Western’s postseason run, was also named First Team All-American, and was a unanimous All-West Region pick and a First Team All-Great Northwest Athletic Conference selection.
Western had four players named First-Team All-GNAC, two named First-Team All-West Region, and four players selected to the All-Tournament team — reserved for the best 11 postseason performers.
Forward Morgan Manalili won GNAC Freshman of the Year. Head coach Travis Connell won GNAC Coach of the Year. Junior forward Estera Levinte earned Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament.
But what comes after reaching the mountaintop of NCAA Division II soccer?
For Webster, who played for Western from 2014–17, the on-field success that her 2016 team enjoyed brought on the pressure of expectation.
Western junior forward Estera Levinte fights for the ball in the NCAA Division II National Championship match against West Chester at Interbay Stadium in Seattle. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)
“We had high expectations for ourselves when I was playing,” Webster said. “Then now, for the program, you have high expectations to get to the Final Four. It does add an element of pressure. You can become more fearful of losing because you have such high expectations and such high hopes to go really far in the tournament.”
Success also drives clout, and the Vikings have surely built that up over the 20 seasons that Connell has been running the show.
Western boasts a pair of national championships in the last six seasons, reached the West Regional title game in each of the last seven seasons, and earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the past 10. Since 2012, Western is a combined 197-25-18, winning more than 85% of its games in the last decade.
Webster, now a successful high school coach at Sehome, said her 2A state runners-up are constantly motivated by the high level of women’s soccer being played just a half mile west of Sehome’s campus.
“A lot of them [want to be Vikings],” Webster said of her players. “We tried to make a point of going to a Western game at least once a year with the Sehome team. It gives them an eye-opener to see really high-level soccer in this awesome community on this beautiful field right in their backyard.”
The allure of hardware and perennial success isn’t just attractive to local programs. Western has already announced five incoming freshman recruits, from around the Northwest, with more expected to join in the offseason.
But the 2022 Western women’s soccer team was not perfect. They opened the preseason by dropping two games, and began the regular season a sluggish 1-1-2 after a Sept. 11 game against Colorado School of Mines was canceled due to rampant wildfire smoke.
The Vikings then went on an absolute tear, going undefeated for the next 12 games, and finishing the season on a seven-game win streak.
Western freshman defender Asia Hardin embraces a teammate following their win over West Chester in the NCAA Division II National Championship game. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)
But certain problems haunted the Vikings all season. They never looked confident defending set pieces, allowing set-piece goals in three of the six games they did not win on the year. The game-tying goal by West Chester in the championship came from a beautiful set-piece lob, headed over Viking senior goalkeeper Claire Henninger. In the five games that Western conceded a set-piece goal, the team had a subpar 2-1-2 record.
Ultimately, any negatives hurled against a tenacious and constantly improving group like the 2022 Western women’s soccer is a nitpick. Most of the players on this team played through a pandemic and lost an entire season in 2020 to the fallout from COVID-19.
That extra layer of adversity, according to a fellow national championship winner, is what separates this year’s title-winning team apart from any in the past.
“I just have to commend this group of players because I cannot imagine trying to go to school and play soccer during a pandemic,” Webster said. “They’ve had to be extra resilient. They had uncertainties with games being canceled and not really knowing when they were going to get back into the schedule. These players had to be extra tough and disciplined and motivated to maintain that high level throughout two-plus years of uncertainty. That alone is a feat.”
