Marking its 19th NCAA Championship appearance, the No. 19 UCF women’s soccer team is set to face Georgia this Saturday in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
UCF fell to Connecticut in the semifinals at Tampa last Saturday 0-1, but still saw senior defender Carleigh Williams and junior midfielder Amanda Wilkin be honored to the AAC All-Tournament team and received a bid for the tournament despite the close call game.
The Knights faced Georgia earlier this year, edged out 0-1, in one of the season’s few losses. An opportunity to replay the Athens based team ignites UCF’s women’s soccer.
“It’s definitely a bittersweet moment for that revenge aspect of it and I think we’re all really excited to play them again,” said senior Caleigh Williams. “It was a disappointment that we didn’t go as far as we wanted in the conference tournament but were going to work even harder, were motivated since we didn’t get that chance and I think we’re going to play just as hard.”
This season’s tournament tallies eight times and four consecutive seasons that the Knights have hosted at least one NCAA tournament round.
“We are always excited to host, so were really thrilled about that, being able to be at home with our home crowd and our own facility,” said head coach Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak in front of BurgerU, awaiting the NCAA bids. “With our friends, our family, administration, we couldn’t ask for more. So we’re really excited to get to be home and host and that we deserve it, we positioned ourselves to be home in the first round.”
UCF hopes to make a seventh second round NCAA Tournament appearance from the past eight years, and they will face the winner of the DePaul (18-0-4) and Wisconsin (18-2-2) game should they succeed.
“We’re proud of the staff and the team for grinding it out this season, I’m really proud of this whole program, said Sahaydak. “The way that were supported is unbelievable here so we have big goals but we have to stayed focused on the first game… keeping an eye on ourselves [and] Georgia.”
The first one hundred UCF students with their student ID will receive free admission to Saturday’s 7 p.m. match, followed by $8 tickets for adults and $5 tickets for youth (2-17) and seniors (55+).
