In the days leading up to the NCAA Division II Women’s Soccer Championship games to be played at Incarnate Word’s Gayle & Tom Benson Stadium (Friday and Sunday), UIW goalkeeper Tori Puentes added a Heartland Conference honor to her season.
Puentes, a sophomore, was named the conference’s Defensive Player of the Week for the final week of the regular season after she improved her record to 13-2-1 with a 2-0 shutout victory over Texas A&M International University in Laredo on November 6th.
The Dustdevils put six shots on-net against the Cardinals and Puentes was up to the challenge, earning her seventh shutout of the season. Additionally, she ended the 2009 regular season with three shutouts and lowered her goals-against-average to 0.68.
This is the second week in a row that Puentes has earned the weekly defensive honor from the conference.
Puentes and the rest of the Cardinals (15-2-3) rode a five-game winning streak into the end of the season and won the Heartland Conference 2009 Title by knocking off St. Edward’s University in that span (1-0 at UIW).
The team will hope to keep that winning mentality and momentum going into the NCAA Championship, getting a bye in the first round after earning a No. 2 seed in the South Central Region (West Texas A&M is the No. 1 seed) and getting to host the first two rounds.
St. Edward’s (15-3-1) was named the No. 3 seed and will be the “home” team against 6th-seeded University of Central Oklahoma (14-6-2) at 7 p.m. on Friday night. The winner of that matchup will face Incarnate Word at 1 p.m. on Sunday, and the winner of that second-round matchup advances to the third round (along with the winner from WTAMU’s half of the bracket), which will be hosted by the West Region next weekend.