Tigers Win NCAC Championship

The Wittenberg University field hockey team ended its 2000 season with one of its best records ever, and the Tigers did it in dramatic fashion. Participating in the KIT/NCAC Regional Tournament in Memphis, Tenn. over the weekend, Wittenberg won a pair of thrilling double overtime affairs against ranked opponents DePauw and Denison.

Despite the heroics, which pushed the Tigers to the 15-win plateau for the third time in four years, Wittenberg was denied a berth in the 18-team NCAA Division III tournament. Denison, a team the Tigers defeated twice this season, earned the conference's automatic bid by virtue of a tiebreaker (the team's were co-champions with 10-2 records), and then Wittenberg was denied one of the two at-large bids awarded to Amherst and Williams.

The Tigers were grouped in a bracket with the top two teams in the KIT and Denison. They started the weekend off on Saturday with a double-overtime, 2-1 win over DePauw, a team Wittenberg had defeated early in the season. Freshman forward Katie Babcock (Phoenix, Md./Dulaney) continued her late-season scoring surge with an unassisted first-half goal, but that was all the scoring the Tigers could muster and the two teams went into extra time. With just 13 seconds before the two teams would have been forced to settle things with a stick-off, senior forward Kelly McMullen (East Amherst, NY/The Nichols School) found the back of the cage off an assist from sophomore Cara Romanowski (Collegeville, Pa./Perkiomen Valley) for the heart-stopping game-winner.

In the championship match, Romanowski was the difference, scoring an unassisted first-half goal to knot the game at 1-1, and then stunning the Big Red with an overtime tally off an assist from sophomore Emily Duh (Hellertown, Pa./Saucon Valley). Junior goalkeeper Georgina Klinzing (Gasport, NY/Royalton Hartland) played a large part as well, turning away 11 shots to give her team a chance to win the contest.

McMullen, one of just three seniors on the roster this year - along with Kacy Heinmiller (Bexley, Ohio/Bexley) and Kati Robbins (Collegeville, Pa./Methacton) - finished the season as the team's top scorer with 11 goals and six assists. Klinzing concluded the campaign as the NCAC's top goaltender with a save percentage of 86.2. She allowed just 18 goals all season and recorded five shutouts in NCAC regular season action.

The Wittenberg field hockey team will be receiving their championship trophy on Saturday during the final regular season football game at Edwards-Maurer Field.