[WCC: Women] For the first time since the West Coast Conference began sponsoring women’s soccer in 1992, three teams shared the conference title. BYU,Portland and Santa Clara all finished with 8-1-0 records, though Santa Clara will get the automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament by virtue of the tiebreaker.
Each of the three tied teamssplit their head-to-head results with the other two teams. The next tiebreaker is goal differential in conference matches. Santa Clara (+27) posted a higher goal differential than BYU (+14) orPortland (+12) against WCC foes.
The Broncos beat Gonzaga for their first WCC championship since 2006. The offense was led by Mexican international SofiaHuerta, who registered the second hat trick of her career and added an assist, and Morgan Marlborough, who scored two goals.
“I am veryhappy and very proud of our team,” said Santa Clara coach Jerry Smith. “It’s not easy to win a conference championship and we are very proud that no one in theconference finished with a better record than us. We’ve had a lot of good teams here at Santa Clara but we haven’t won the conference title the past six years. It’s great for the program to be back ontop of the West Coast Conference. I am especially happy for our nine seniors who now have a WCC championship to take away from their final year.”
BYU beat St, Mary’s, 6-1, while Portlanddefeated San Francisco, 1-0.