Championship weekend

Records entering the game: Portland State heads into today’s semifinal match against Northern Arizona as the favorites, after they finished atop the Big Sky standings with 14 points after seven matches.

The Vikings were crowned the regular season Big Sky Champions when they finished their league proceedings with a 4-1-2 record.

“It was so much fun to watch our team—especially our graduating seniors—celebrate an accomplishment they hadn’t reached before. I am very proud of them,” head coach Laura Schott said.

Northern Arizona, on the other hand, held on to a playoff position despite being humbled with a 4-0 loss to last-place Northern Colorado in their final league game. The Lumberjacks finished the Big Sky in fourth place with four wins and three losses.

Last year’s meeting: The Vikings will seek redemption in today’s match for last season’s semifinal loss to Northern Arizona. The Lumberjacks were the only team the Viks played twice last season—they tied 0-0 with the Lumberjacks in Portland and then fell to them, 1-0, in the semifinals in Ogden, Utah.

Scouting the Lumberjacks: The Vikings’ only conference loss this year came against the Lumberjacks. Northern Arizona prevailed at their home field over the Vikings, 1-0. Northern Arizona’s Jenna Samora scored the lone goal of the match in the 85th minute to give Northern Arizona their first conference victory.

“NAU is a good, aggressive, direct team. I expect them to come with a similar game plan to the one we saw at NAU already this fall,” Schott said.

Scouting the Vikings: Today’s match will be the Vikings’ third consecutive appearance in the Big Sky postseason, a first in school history. In each previous appearance, they were knocked out in the semifinals, but this year the Viks are determined to get past Northern Arizona.

“The morale of the team is very good right now,” Schott said. Adding to the team’s morale this week is the news that both senior goalkeeper Cris Lewis and senior forward Dolly Enneking—the Viks’ all-time leading goal scorer and present Golden Boot Award winner—were respectively named the Big Sky’s Defensive and Offensive Most Valuable Players. The Vikings also had a total of nine selections to the all-conference teams, equaling the school record of nominations set in 2004.

If the Vikings make it past the Lumberjacks, on Sunday they will face the winner of the Eastern Washington and Idaho State game for the Big Sky Championship and an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament.