TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The No. 19-ranked Pitt women’s soccer team (14-5-3) saw its historic season come to an end with a 3-0 setback to No. 5-ranked Florida State (16-2-3) in the 2022 NCAA Championship Third Round Sunday at the Seminole Soccer Complex.
“I think we’re all walking out with our head held high,” head coach Randy Waldrum said. “We lost to a great team. We knew what we were getting into, and they were fantastic. It would’ve taken us to be very good again, like we were at home, and it would’ve taken them to have a little bit of an off night for the result to have gone a little bit different. I’m just proud of the effort and the performance that we put in.”
The Panthers wrapped up a year in which they set program records for most wins (14), ACC wins (5), home wins (8), points (138) and goals (47) in a single season. Pitt posted road wins over Virginia Tech and Notre Dame during the regular season, beating both for the first time in program history. The Panthers qualified for both the ACC Championship and NCAA Championship fields for the first time.
“It’s disappointing to lose, but to make it this far is something nobody can ever take away from us,” sophomore Sarah Schupansky said. “I’m very fortunate that this isn’t my last season with this program, and I’m very excited to be able to try to go even further next year with the team that the coaching staff has created. The coaching staff talked about at the end of the game how we didn’t stop fighting, even until the last whistle. I think no matter what the score would’ve been; they could’ve been up by 10 goals, the game could have been 90 minutes longer than it was, and I don’t think we ever would have stopped. There’s nothing we wanted more than to move on. But Florida State’s a great program, a great team, very skillful, and we fell, but we fell to a great team. Our time is done this season, but our time as a program for sure isn’t finished.”
Florida State, the No. 1 overall seed and reigning NCAA champions, got off to a quick start, taking a 1-0 lead 77 seconds into the game on a breakaway goal by Beata Olsson that Jody Brown and Onyi Echegini assisted on.
The No. 4-seeded Panthers seemed to settle in after the quick goal by the Seminoles, keeping Florida State…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Pitt Panthers #H2P…