"The heart we played with on Saturday and Sunday was unbelievable," said goalie Brooke Diamond '03. "We kept saying each time we huddled in between the halves and the overtime periods [that we wanted to] go home without regrets, and that's what we did."
Nevertheless, the fantastic finish didn't come easily for the Jeffs, as offense was at a premium during the first two games of the tournament.
First came the Jeffs' 1-0 quarterfinal win over Springfield-a game in which the lone goal came on a Margaret Rubin '02 header in the 49th minute.
In Saturday's semifinal at Wellesley, neither team was able to put a goal on the board in 90 minutes of regulation or 30 minutes of overtime, sending the match to a penalty-kick tiebreaker.
There, the Jeffs got an emotional boost from midfielder Cathy Poor '02, who was sidelined by a pair of stress fractures in her left foot. Poor, who did not play during regulation, trudged out to take Amherst's first penalty kick, and ended up besting Wellesley goalie Elizabeth Senecal with a right-footed blast to give the Jeffs a 1-0 lead. Wellesley responded in kind, after successive kicks from Katie Shipley '03 and Hallison Putnam '02.
After Jenny Rossman '04 converted the Jeffs' fourth penalty kick, however, Diamond broke up Wellesley's shot. After she broke up Wellesley's fifth shot as well, the Jeffs had a 4-3 win on penalty kicks, the first such tiebreaker win in the program's history.
"The team did a great job [in the tiebreaker]," said Diamond. "The way in which Cathy started us off just set the tone for the rest of the kicks. It was amazing; truly a team effort."
Putnam commented on the game as well as the key saves at the end: "...the Wellesley game was a tough battle. We controlled the majority of play in that game but were unable to to capitalize on our opportunities," she said. "Even though [Diamond] was playing with a pretty bad injury, we were all confident in her and she came up with a big game-winning save of the day."
The victory-officially recorded as a tie-propelled the Jeffs into the tournament final, where they headed back to Bates College, the site of their first loss of the season on Sept. 16. This time around, however, the offense came early and often for both teams, in a wild, back-and-forth affair that saw the Amherst squad take an eighth-minute lead on the first career goal from Sarah O'Keefe '02.
Bates retaliated later in the half, scoring twice within a five-minute span to take a 2-1 lead to halftime, though the game was far from over in the minds of the Jeffs.
"Even though we were down a goal to Bates, we were in control of the game," said Putnam. "There was never a point when we were frantically trying to catch up to their lead."
"We just refused to let our second chance at the season go to waste," said Diamond. "We couldn't feel that way again. The team was just amazing, we just turned it up another notch and were determined to score."
After halftime, the visiting Jeffs, playing through steady rain and in front of a large and hostile Bates crowd, regrouped and retaliated, led by Putnam. The junior midfielder, who would later be named the Tournament's Most Valuable Player, leveled the match with a goal off a Brianna Porco '03 cross in the 62nd minute, a score that stood up into overtime.
"When it went to overtime, we realized we hadn't come that far to let it slip away," she said. "I don't even think the ball passed into our half of the field during the first overtime. We just ate them alive."
The Jeffs, who outshot Bates 10-3 in extra time, continued to struggle to finish their scoring chances through the first two 15-minute periods, before Rossman played the hero in the 133rd minute. The rookie redirected a Shipley free kick past Bates goalkeeper Kim Martell, icing the ECAC title-the first ever-for the Jeffs.
Though the game ended with an outstanding individual effort, the credit for the win goes to the whole team. "We played our best game of the season against Bates, everyone was on top of their game," said Putnam. "It was only fitting that we played up to our potential in the last game of the season."
Rossman's goal, the latest ever scored by an Amherst player-besting the previous record, held by Katie Connelly '00, by 27 seconds-capped an incredible finish to a season that could best be characterized as wild, as the Jeffs posted an 11-5-2 mark in a school-record 18 games.
The squad's two seniors, Co-captains Alexa Faigen '01 and Meg Riley '01, finish their careers with a record of 45-13-8, including a 5-2-2 record in post-season contests.