Kelsey Wright was one of the girls that was sidelined with an injury before returning to the field for the last-weekend of the regular season. Photo by Melissa Bauer-Herzog.

The Women’s Soccer team had to climb some high hurdles this year to make it to playoffs, including fighting their own bodies. While the team had an overall regular season record of 9-10-1 ¾ better than five of the other Lone Star Conference teams ¾ and an a LSC record of 9-10-1, only a few of those victories came with a mostly full team available to play.

Throughout the year, the Lady Buffs had six players with season-ending injuries with everything from torn ACLs to fractured ankles. At one point, over a third of the team was on the bench, sidelined with injuries that forced them to miss multiple games.

“It seems like some years, you have a lot of injuries and some years you have very few injuries,” WTAMU Head Trainer Ron Hulsey said. “I just think we are in one of those cycles where the last couple of years we’ve been hit pretty hard, but hopefully we’ll get through this one then have a few years to kind of average it out.” Continue reading →

The WTAMU Lady Buff soccer team traveled to Abilene to participate in the Lone Star Conference championship tournament on Nov. 3 as the sixth seed. The Lady Buffs defeated Eastern New Mexico 1-0 in the first round but fell to Midwestern State 2-1 in overtime in the semifinals.

The first round game against the ENMU Zias was a knock-down drag-out fight. Neither team was able to score in the first half, and each team’s goalie made four saves in the half. WT outshot the Zias 10-5 during the half.

The Lady Buffs finally broke through at 77:26 into the game. Senior Leslie Briggs’ corner kick tipped off the Zias goalie’s hands and into the net. The 1-0 victory made the Lady Buffs the first six seed to make it out of the first round since WT did it in 2007. Continue reading →