BALTIMORE - Meg Boyer scored the game-winner in the 79th minute to send Haverford College's women's soccer team to its first Centennial Conference tournament championship -- and into the NCAA tournament -- with Sunday afternoon's 2-1 win over host and 24th-ranked Johns Hopkins University in the final of the league playoffs at Homewood Field.
The victory provides Haverford (14-3-2) with the conference's automatic bid into the NCAA 2012 Divsion III women's soccer tournament. Hopkins (15-4-1) will have to hope for an at-large bid to continue its season.
This will be the Haverford women's soccer program's second trip into the NCAAs as the 2005 squad played into the national tournament's second round.
Sunday's championship final looked like the day's end result might be different than its actual outcome as Hopkins forced Haverford goalkeeper Robin Chernow to make a pair of saves in the opening 103 seconds of action. The Blue Jays were able to break on top in the seventh minute with a goal from Christina Convey.
However, Phoebe Miller's header evened the score at the 18:41 mark. Miller knocked home a cross from Sarah Hoffman on a corner kick opportunity, directing her shot inside the near post before Blue Jays goalie Meredith Maguire could reach it.
Boyer, with her 11th goal of the year, provided the game-winner by chipping in a shot from 30 yards out into the top right corner over a leaping Maguire with a little more than 10 minutes remaining.
Three weeks ago, on the same field, the Fords entered halftime of a regular season match-up with the Blue Jays trailing 2-0 in what eventually became a 5-1 loss. Sunday was a much different story as the Fords not only entered the intermission all even on the scoreboard, but out shot Hopkins, 8-7, over the final 45 minutes and equaled the Blue Jays with three corner kick chances in the second half.
The Haverford victory ends a seven-year title run for Hopkins which has played in 11 of the 12 conference postseason tournaments, winning eight of them, since the Centennial initiated the tournament format beginning with the 2001 season.
Selections for the NCAA tournament field, beyond the automatic qualifiers, will be released Monday, Nov. 5 at 1:30 p.m. with first- and second-round games taking place on Nov. 10-11. Sectionals of the tournament are scheduled for Nov. 17-18.
The final four of both the men's and women's D-III tournaments will be fielded by San Antonio, Texas, at Blossom Soccer Stadium. Semifinals are on Nov. 30 with the national championship final taking place on Dec. 1.