With wind cutting through already cold air and snow piled up a few yards away from the endlines of Nickerson Field, the Boston University women’s soccer team broke a record on Sunday afternoon.
When the Terriers beat the Binghamton University Bearcats 2-1 in an America East Conference semifinal showdown, they earned their 17th win of the season.
In the 17-year history of the Boston women’s soccer program, no other team has won more than 16 games.
After the game, when BU coach Nancy Feldman was informed of the record-breaking implications of the victory, she responded with a bit of shock, surprise and congratulations for her squad.
“Is that right?” Feldman said. “I guess the 2011 team deserves to be in the record book then.”
Feldman, who earned her 300th career win at the start of this season and has been the leader of the Terriers for all 17 years of the program’s history, credits the 17 wins to the Terriers’ mentality and the level of their expectations. She thinks that BU’s historical success – the team has had only one season with an overall losing record, and it has won the America East title the past five years – has helped to push the team further and further with each season.
“I don’t think they get too big-headed about winning and they have high standards for themselves,” Feldman said. “Every year we kind of feel like we can do a little bit more.”
According to Feldman, BU is confident in its overall performance and is emotionally stable, largely by not putting too much into any one game.
“They get up and energized and pumped for games, but they’re not emotional, like high/low based on results, [or] based on [their] performance,” she said.
The Terriers have won all nine of their conference games this season. BU will now get a shot to earn a clean bill against America East foes in next weekend’s championship game, which will be held at Nickerson Field.
Their opponent will be determined on Monday, when the University of Hartford hosts the University of Albany at 1 p.m. The game was rescheduled from Sunday because of the storm that swept through the northeast Saturday night.
In addition to the nine conference wins, the Terriers played a stringent out-of-conference regular season schedule this year, one that included their only tie of the season against then-No. 4 Boston College.
Two weeks later, BU traveled to Seattle for the Husky/Nike Invitational. The Terriers beat their second ranked opponent in their second game on the west coast, when they beat the then-No. 8 University of Portland Pilots 2-0.
Additionally, BU has defeated Northeastern University, Illinois State University, Loyola University (Maryland) and a trio of Ivy League opponents, Harvard University, Yale University and Dartmouth College.
BU has lost only twice this year, with both losses coming on a weekend road trip to two New England schools, when the Terriers played the University of Connecticut and University of Massachusetts. Since the 3-0 and 1-0 losses to UConn and UMass, respectively, BU has been on a 12-game win streak.
The previous record of 16 wins was achieved by two prior squads or Terriers. In 2000, BU went 16-7-0, with a 9-0-0 record against America East opponents. Last year, BU was 16-6-0 when the season came to an end at Boston College in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Terriers beat all eight of their conference challengers in 2010.
Even after the accomplishment of her team this year had sunk in for a moment, Feldman was still a bit in awe what her team had accomplished.
“Boy, that’s a great achievement isn’t it?” Feldman said. “With the schedule we had, that’s pretty good.”
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