2025 CAC Women's Soccer

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Events and Results

Georgia Gwinnett College Athletics

Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies

Women's Soccer Wins Third Straight CAC Title

The top-seeded Georgia Gwinnett College women's soccer team won its third consecutive Continental Athletic Conference championship and eighth conference title in the last nine seasons with a 4-2 victory over No. 2 seed Bellevue University (Nebraska) in Tuesday evening's tournament championship match at the Grizzly Soccer Complex. The team has qualified for the NAIA national tournament.

"The term Conference Champions has a nice sound to it," said Head Coach Dr. Mike Giuliano. "I did everything I could today to keep the players calm by cracking jokes and showing fun videos from throughout the year, because you know there were nerves when a lot is at stake."

The Grizzlies (10-5-5) scored the match's first four goals before Bellevue (12-3-2) came back with two late second-half tallies to make things interesting.

GGC capitalized on a mistake by Bellevue's goalkeeper to take an early 1-0 lead as freshman Hannah Lorenz scored in the 12th minute.

Then both teams were evenly matched for the next 20 minutes before junior Jade Perrin scored a fantastic 23-yard free kick into the upper right corner in the 33rd minute of the match.

"I saw that the right side was pretty open, so I tried to curve it. I actually thought it was going to miss wide, but then my teammates were celebrating. Going up 2-0 was huge and we played a good first half," said Perrin.

Giuliano added, "It was a perfect play. Our leadership team came up to me and proposed that Jade start taking some free kicks from that distance. She struck it as perfect as you could."

The second half started with high energy play. Bellevue almost scored when forward Mia Hurt hit the crossbar. GGC junior goalkeeper Rirei Sasaki followed with an excellent save on the rebound to keep the shutout on the scoreboard.

In the 57th minute, the tournament hosts took a 3-0 advantage when a long pass from sophomore Kathrine Lindenberg and a header by sophomore Nova Eskelinen gave senior Natalie Maguire the opportunity of weaving around the goalkeeper for a goal.

Four minutes later, Perrin intercepted a pass in the attacking zone, dribbled into the box and found Lorenz to net her second goal of the match and team-leading eighth tally.

Bellevue fought back with the two late goals, one by Adi Kasel in the 74th minute and another own goal in the 83rd minute.

Both teams recorded 11 shots, with Sasaki making four saves.

This marked the fifth consecutive conference championship match between GGC and Bellevue.

The Grizzlies will find out its NAIA postseason destination when the national tournament's 40-team field is announced on Friday, November 14, at 7 p.m.