As the NAIA's No. 1-ranked Azusa Pacific makes its ninth straight appearance at the national tournament, senior forward Taryn Apo "blogs" from Olathe, sharing her thoughts and experiences from the 2006 NAIA Women's Soccer Championship.
After winning our first game, Coach wanted to keep us fairly calm so as not to get too excited before today’s game. So to keep our mind of the game we went to a Jeremy Camp concert in Kansas City. I know — seriously?! To sum it up, the concert was kind of like the best chapel ever. I think we should get chapel credit. :-) Jeremy Camp was awesome, and everyone got to meet him. Well, almost everyone. A few people were bummed because they were in the bathroom when the rest of the team met him…I was one of them. But it’s okay; the concert was still worth it. Spending time with my teammates worshiping God the night before a big game was perfect. Everyone belting out “Beautiful One” together brought me to tears. Seeing all of our coaches jumping and screaming to every other song was also pretty entertaining.
The concert kept our mind off of things for the few hours we were there, but as soon as we got out we were thinking about the game. Some, like our trainer April Reed, might have been a little too preoccupied with getting ready for the game, but only because she loves us so much. With memories of food poisoning the night before the quarterfinal game last year, she told us that last night she woke up every hour fearing she’d have some vomiting Cougar stumbling to her door at 2 a.m. When it rolled around to 4 a.m. she knew she was in the clear and finally fell asleep.
Now you’d think we might be bored playing Westmont three times in one season but that was definitely not the case. After a 1-1 record with them the score needed to be settled once and for all. To up the stakes, with an awesome pregame speech, Coach also explained that with a win, we’d be changing history. Before today, APU had never beaten Westmont in national tournament play. So today’s game wasn’t just a quarterfinal game, it was personal. And as the game started, you could tell.
Westmont looked like a different team than we had played in regionals. They came out hard and physical; double, sometimes triple teaming Theresa and literally clawing and kicking to stay in the game. We started out pretty evenly matched, but once we settled down to play our game things started to flow. But when Fletch went down, I think it kind of rattled us. An irreplaceable player on the field and our captain, when she went down my heart sank at first. But instead of dropping our heads, it seemed like we actually picked things up not only to keep the intensity but to play for her. With the wind on our backs for the second half, we pretty much dominated. Randie’s header in the first 10 minutes put us ahead and we held the lead till the end although I think the last five minutes of the game were pretty much the longest of my life. So we made history today, we won the APU versus Westmont tiebreaker, and it was amazing. Some of us even teared when that final whistle blew. Not to mention any names…Jolie. :-)
