By Tim Heiduk
November 2, 2019
 
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) The #8 Westmont women's soccer team (13-2-1 overall, 7-1 GSAC) clinched a share of the GSAC regular season title with a 6-0 win over Arizona Christian (6-12, 0-8) on Senior Day. It's the first conference title for the Warriors since 2015 and the first for this current group of seniors.
 
"It feels amazing," said Westmont senior captain Kira Nemeth. "We haven't won it the past three years, so it's truly a blessing to win it my senior year. It's a dream come true."
 
"Words don't really describe it," said Westmont's first-year head coach Jenny Jaggard. "It's something you dream about and you don't necessarily think it's a realistic thing to start your career that way, so I'm super lucky. Obviously there's a lot of work that's gone into this behind the scenes and I'm just really proud of the players, because they're the ones who do the work. They're super coachable and it's been a joy to work with them."
 
Westmont entered the day knowing that if it won, it would at least share the regular season conference title with Vanguard (11-2-2, 7-1).
 
"My job, is to be the sobering, 'Now don't count your chickens before they hatch. You haven't won this game yet,'" said Jaggard. "That's been my voice the last couple days, that we've still got to get the work done. I know that it's exciting that you can see that prize and almost taste it, but soccer is a crazy game and you've got to take care of business."
 
The Warriors did just that, wasting no time to get on the scoreboard. In just the third minute of play, seniors Brooke Porter and Nemeth combined for the team's opening goal. It was Nemeth's third goal of the season.
 
"That was pretty awesome to get an assist from Brooke, another senior," said Nemeth. "We were dreaming about those combinations today and what today was going to look like. It played out perfectly the way that we wanted it to."
 
Bri Johnson padded the Warriors' lead in the 24th minute, scoring her 12th goal of the season off assists from Maddi Berthoud and Nemeth. In the 45th minute, Isabelle Berthoud joined Johnson in double figures with her 10th goal of the season, giving Westmont a 3-0 halftime lead.
 
Johnson added her second goal of the game and 13th of the season in the 75th minute, making it her fourth multi-goal game this year. The junior forward scored 10 goals in GSAC regular season play, scoring in seven of the eight games.
 
Valerie Swisher then scored just 1:02 after Johnson, slotting away her second goal of the year after Johnson's shot was blocked. Reese Davidson finished the scoring for the Warriors in the 80th minute, her third of the season.
 
As the clock counted down, the Warriors' bench anxiously waited for the clock to hit 0:00 and erupted when it did, jumping up and down into each other's arms. The team then snuck up on its head coach and dumped water from a cooler on Jaggard as she was preparing for a live interview on the Westmont Sports Network.
 
The win was particularly sweet for Porter, also a team captain, who missed her first three seasons at Westmont due to injury.
 
"It's surreal and I still can't believe it's happening," said Porter. "At the end of the day, there's something special with this group of women and it has been such a joy to be a part of it. These last three years were rough, but it's brought me here. It makes this moment so much sweeter for me and I'm so proud of my teammates.
 
"Getting to do it with Katelyn (Merrell), Kira (Nemeth), and Maddi (Berthoud) is like doing it with my best friends. We do life together on and off the field and for us to put our mark on this program, it means a lot to us."
 
The team entered the season with a first-year head coach and 13 incoming freshman of the team's 28 players. The Warriors then opened up the season with a 1-2 home defeat to Southern Oregon, but turned things around in the grandest of ways, defeating #1 William Carey 3-0 and winning their first conference title in four years.
 
"There were a lot of question marks coming into this season," said Porter. "Having a new coach, 13 incoming players, and only four of us seniors, it kind of looked like a mountain at the beginning of the year. It's been a process, it really has. We've little by little started to put the pieces together and things are just starting to click.

"It started off kind of crazy and then we went to Georgia and won big out there. We took that confidence straight into conference and we've been putting it together ever since. We had a hiccup with The Master's, but I'm so proud of how the team responded from that."

By virtue of its 3-0 win over Vanguard on Oct. 12, Westmont will have the number one seed in the upcoming GSAC Tournament and will host the semifinals and finals on Nov. 14 and 16. The Warriors will hope their home form continues, as the team outscored its opponents 17-0 on Thorrington Field in the GSAC regular season.
 
"I'm so excited we're playing on Thor," said Porter. "I think that it makes the world of difference. Thor's our home. We're just going to defend it with all we got, but it sets us up really well to win this thing."
 
As the top seed, the Warriors will play the lowest remaining seed in the semifinals and if they win, would advance to the championship game two days later. The team isn't looking too far ahead just yet.
 
"We have to keep our heads on straight," said Jaggard. "It's very easy at this point to have our feet off the ground a little bit, floating around and not realizing the reality of how tough our road is that's ahead. I think we just have to get back to work, be humble, and be hungry. Soccer is a crazy game. Who knows what's going to happen, but we're going to battle and do our very best to go all the way."
 
If the last two games are any indication of Westmont's postseason fate, the Warriors are in good shape.
 
"It's definitely been a steady incline, especially with us notching 12 goals these last two games," said Nemeth. "We've been exploding in our offense and shutting them down defensively as well. I think we're on the rise and are peaking into the postseason."