Oct. 30, Fort Worth - One year removed from not being able to even field a team, the Texas Wesleyan Women’s Soccer program is headed to the playoffs.

Wesleyan (7-7, 1-3 in conference) and UT-Permian Basin were tied for the fourth and final playoff spot, but a UT-Permian Basin loss to College of the Southwest last week gives the Lady Falcons a 1-4 conference record, and makes Wesleyan’s Sunday match against Texas A&M International moot. Even with a loss, Wesleyan owns the tiebreaker against UT-Permian Basin, thanks to a 5-0 victory on September 29th.

For head coach Steve Jones, this marks the eighth consecutive year he has led a college-level team to a post-season berth. Even more amazing is the fact that Wesleyan didn’t field a women’s team in 2001, and Jones didn’t join Wesleyan until August.

“That coach Jones could come in here and recruit enough players for a team was impressive given the time constraints he had to work with,” said University Athletic Director Terry Waldrop. “But to make the playoffs on top of that, it’s really special.”

Said Jones, “Putting together the team in such a short amount of time, [making the playoffs] is not something we thought was feasible. It’s exciting to see that the hard work these girls have put in has allowed us to overcome a lack of experience and other obstacles that arise out of not having a team for a year. I’m so proud of all of them. They made this happen.”

Wesleyan was led this season by freshman Jessica Carrion, who has scored 18 goals in Wesleyan’s 14 games. Her average of 1.29 goals per game average is four-tenths of a point higher than the next closest total, and more than doubles that of all but two other players. Carrion has also added three assists during the season so far, and leads the conference in total points and points per game.

Junior Jolene Ratliff (11 games, 4 goals, 1 assist), sophomore Jessica Elder (9 games, 2 goals, 3 assists), sophomore Uduma Ogidi (14 games, 2 goals, 4 assists), and freshman Tyler Mabry (14 games, 3 goals, 2 assists) are among the conference point-per-game leaders as well. Freshman goalkeeper Katrina Fishback has posted three shutouts thus far, and has allowed an average of just 2.14 goals per game – good numbers for a young keeper.

“With some girls returning from the previous team (two seasons ago) and some talented freshman who stepped in and helped right away, we were able to put a pretty good team out on the field this year,” says Jones, “and they’re only going to get better.”

The first round of the playoffs begin on Tuesday, November 5th. Wesleyan will travel to Muskogee, Oklahoma to face Red River Conference #1 seed, the Lady Warriors of Bacone College (12-6-1, 4-0-1). The winner advances to face the winner of #2 College of the Southwest (9-9, 4-1) and #3 Northwood University (8-8-2, 3-1-1). Wesleyan lost to all three schools during the regular season, but each game was close.

“If a couple of bounces had gone our way, we could have beaten any of the other teams in the playoffs this year,” said Jones. “Plus, we’re just starting to play our best soccer of the year. I’m really looking forward to these games.”