On homecoming Saturday in late September, the Concordia University, Nebraska Women’s Soccer team gathered at halftime deadlocked in a scoreless draw with Briar Cliff. A season that started with hefty expectations was teetering on the brink of disappointment. Top goal scorers Kierstynn Garner and Savannah Andrews were out with injuries, meaning the Bulldogs simply had to find a way – or else they risked falling to 0-4 in conference play.
Fast forward to the middle of November and Head Coach Nick Smith’s squad finds itself preparing for a national tournament game as one of the final 40 teams left standing in NAIA women’s soccer. How did this scenario that seemed unlikely in late September come to fruition?
“It was a really good growing moment for the team to be able to get the Briar Cliff result and the Dakota Wesleyan result without those two,” said Smith in reference to Garner and Andrews. “It allowed everyone else to start to feel the belief. That gave confidence to KG and Sav to understand that they don’t need to do it all. We have a lot of players who are capable of stepping up and winning games. During those five games (to start GPAC play), we as a group matured a great deal. I think we gained a lot of belief in ourselves because of those. I think that set the stage for us to make the run that we did to close out the season.”
The goal that freshman Kyana Rios scored in the 49th minute versus Briar Cliff may prove to be the most significant goal of the entire season for the national qualifying Bulldogs. The goal propelled Concordia to a 1-0 win and set in motion an utterly dominant program record 10-game winning streak that saw the Bulldogs vault themselves into second place in the final GPAC standings. As part of the surge, KG and Sav returned to the field in a big way, Angela Banks came into her own as a keeper and the back line found consistency after saying goodbye to one of the program’s all-time greats, Grace Soenksen.
Over the stretch of 10-straight wins, Concordia outscored its opponents by a combined total of 36-3 and earned GPAC postseason home wins over College of Saint Mary and Dordt. As part of the 10-game run, the Kearney High School product Garner tallied 12 goals and 10 assists while reaching another level of stardom. In front of Banks, Taylor Slaymaker and Trinity Rowe rounded into form at center back and Niah Kirchner kept doing her thing in the middle of the park.
The talent has always been there. When adversity hit, Smith had to ensure that his team found a mental edge and understood that the preseason goals they had set were still attainable. There just wasn't any margin for error left.
As Kirchner says, “Coach kept saying in the locker room, ‘We just need to get the domino to fall.’ Once we get the first one, it will keep going for us. We knew the Briar Cliff game was a big one. It wasn’t going too good for us. We had a lot of high hopes and then we had the loss to Northwestern and the Dordt game that we lost in the final seconds. We were a little bit down, but I think our team culture really picked us up. We just knew that if we trusted each other, we could win out. Coach kept telling us, ‘If we win out, we put ourselves in the place we want to be in anyway.’ We had the confidence, and we knew we could go for it.”
At some point, the 2024 Bulldogs had to settle in and simply play the game. Concordia seemed to surprise even itself in 2023 when it finished at 13-4-3 and placed second in the GPAC. With nearly everyone coming back from that squad this fall (with the exception of Soenksen), the Bulldogs entered this season as one of the league favorites. The question became: could Concordia handle the weight of these increased expectations?
On Sept. 18 in the GPAC opener, the Bulldogs endured perhaps their roughest moments of the entire season when they conceded four goals in a stretch of fewer than 10 minutes against a then winless Northwestern opponent. Concordia wound up suffering an unexpected defeat, 4-3, in a game it had mostly dominated on its home turf.
Said Slaymaker, “This year, I felt like there was a little bit of pressure at the beginning of the season because we did really well last year. We felt like we had to live up to that and I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We didn’t play as well as we were capable of. I don’t really know what happened. Something clicked and we kind of figured out how to play together – and we were tired of losing.”
There were some reasons for concern at a time when the Bulldogs were not getting the desired results and Garner was sidelined by injury. Down KG and Sav, Concordia showed its grittiness with the win over Briar Cliff and the 2-1 come-from-behind victory at Dakota Wesleyan that featured a goal apiece from two freshmen: Rios and Sierra McElhannon. That was a start. In the next outing, KG and Sav returned to the lineup and both found the back of the net in a 3-1 win over Morningside.
The dominoes had started to fall. Even while dealing with an ankle injury, a quad strain and back spasms, Garner was in the midst of putting together another First Team All-GPAC season (21 goals and 12 assists entering the national tournament).
“Losing sucks,” Garner said quite frankly. “Winning just makes the game more fun. We were 0-3 and I don’t want to say there were doubts, but it’s not as fun. Once we got the streak going, we gained confidence and the practices were more fun and the games were more fun. The pieces just clicked.”
The victory over Morningside led to wins over Doane, 2-1, Waldorf, 8-0, College of Saint Mary, 4-0, Mount Marty, 6-0, Midland, 6-0, CSM again, 3-0, and Dordt, 1-0. The triumph over Dordt avenged a regular season defeat and locked the Bulldogs into the GPAC’s second automatic bid to the national tournament. Concordia accomplished that feat not only because of the attacking exploits of Garner and Andrews but also because of the team’s collective defensive improvement.
“For her (Angela Banks), it was just about consistency,” Smith said in breaking down the team’s progress in the defensive third. “For the first half of the year, we were really changing the back line often. We had injuries – (Hannah) Kile was out for a run of games and Taylor was out for some time. We were throwing Rosie (Gyllenswan) back there at times. We were figuring out outside backs. The key was getting people healthy and having younger players like Trin and Avery (Black) getting comfortable at that level. They started to perform really well. That made a big difference. Ange had a turning point versus Morningside where she saves the penalty. After that, she only concedes one more goal until we get to the GPAC final.”
The realization that all current players are about to experience the national tournament for the first time is just beginning to set in. The program will make its fourth all-time national tournament appearance when action gets underway in the first round on Nov. 21.
Says Kirchner, “It’s really exciting for us. Coach keeps telling us how special this really is. We’re going to have a watch party, get together and see where we’re headed. We’re going to embrace the moment. All the pressure is on these other teams. We just get to go out there and have fun and give it our all.”
As the Bulldogs look ahead to the national tournament, they know they will be faced with a major challenge while going on the road. Said Slaymaker, “I know it’s going to be exciting and that it’s going to be a different level. We’re going to have to come out and play our absolute best for a full 90 minutes. It’s going to be exciting to go out there with the girls.”
Added Garner, “In this program we’ve never won a national game before, so that’s definitely a goal that we all have in mind. To be able to experience it is something not a lot of people in the country get to do. We want to enjoy every moment of it and show the hard work we’ve put in all season.”
Whether a win comes on the national stage or not, Concordia can look back at the 2024 season as a success, particularly for the way it responded when faced with adversity. Smith wants his players to think of this as the start of something even bigger. High expectations are going to be part of the deal moving forward. This group of Bulldogs now understands how to manage them.
Said Smith, “If you as a player aren’t excited to play in a national tournament game, then this probably isn’t the program for you. These are what our goals are. This is what we worked for starting in the spring to get to the point where we’re still playing at this time of year. To be able to be one of the final 40 teams is exciting in and of itself. It’s about enjoying the moment. A lot of players on our roster are going to be coming back to us next year with the idea that we’d like to go on a similar run next year too. This is going to be an experience for us to learn from and see what this level looks like, and what we need to do as a program to continue taking steps forward.”