Cowgirl Soccer Top 20 Moments, 1996-2014

The Oklahoma State Cowgirl soccer program will mark its 20^th season in 2015. As we celebrate two decades of milestones, OSU head coach Colin Carmichael and assistant coach Karen Hancock, who each have been with the program since its inception and served stints as head coaches to help build the program into a national power, collaborated on a list of the top 20 moments in Cowgirl soccer history. Over the next month, we'll reveal their list (which is in no particular order) on www.okstate.com.

Beating Texas A&M for the first time in program history in the 2009 Big 12 Championship title game

Along with bringing another Big 12 championship trophy to the program, this win took on added meaning as OSU's first — and still only — win over nemesis Texas A&M.

A pair of freshmen helped lead the Cowgirls to the win. Defender Carson Michalowski notched the game's lone goal on a header off a Colleen Dougherty corner kick in the 54^th minute, and goalie AD Franch racked up seven saves, six of them in the second half, to help the score stand up.

Said TAMU head coach G. Guerrieri after the game, "Their goalkeeper was great — she made big-time saves … Oklahoma State did a great job of battling and scraping to keep us off the scoreboard."

In knocking off the No. 2-seed Aggies, the fifth-seeded Cowgirls claimed their first Big 12 tourney title since 2003, and the conference championship marked the second in a run of four for OSU from 2008-11.

TAMU entered the contest outshooting its opponents by an average of 22-10, but the match ended with the Aggies holding a slight 12-11 edge in shots, with nine of theirs coming after intermission.

OSU sophomore Melinda Mercado was named the Big 12 Championship Defensive MVP and was joined on the all-tournament team by Franch, midfielder Annika Niemeier and forwards Kasey Langdon and Siera Strawser.

Colin Carmichael: "It speaks volumes about how good Texas A&M's program has been the last 20 years that it took us that long to beat them because we had some good teams back then. I remember in the first half of the game, we were very, very dominant, but it was 0-0. Carson (Michalowski) scored early in the second half, but I remember thinking we really needed another goal. They threw everything at us the second half, and AD (Franch) made save after save. Late in the game, we were out on our feet, and I was just rotating players trying to keep fresh legs on the field. To hang on and get the win was great and to win that Big 12 championship meant a lot to us."

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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