Oklahoma State University Athletics

Cowgirl Soccer Hosts Tournament To Open 2021 Season
August 18, 2021 | Cowgirl Soccer
Game Notes
UTSA at #16 Oklahoma State
Thurs., Aug. 19 • 7:30 p.m. • Stillwater, Okla.
Neal Patterson Stadium (2,500)
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Pittsburgh at #16 Oklahoma State
Sun., Aug. 22 • 11 a.m. • Stillwater, Okla.
Neal Patterson Stadium (2,500)
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TV/Video: Big 12 Now on ESPN+ (Mike Wolfe & Anna Beffer)
Radio: Stillwater Radio KGFY 105.5 FM/stillwaterradio.net (Bill Van Ness)
Live Stats: okstate.statbroadcast.com
Twitter In-Game Updates: @CowgirlFC
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About Oklahoma State
    • Oklahoma State opens the 2021 season by hosting the BancFirst Cowgirl Soccer Invitational at Neal Patterson Stadium; the tournament field also includes Pittsburgh, UTSA and Tulsa. The Cowgirls open their season against UTSA Thursday night and conclude tourney play by facing Pitt on Sunday.    • OSU is coming off a 13-3-2 showing last season, one in which the Cowgirls finished third in the Big 12 Conference standings at 6-2-1. OSU earned its second consecutive berth in the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship as the tourney's No. 10 national seed and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the third time in program history.
    • OSU returns 21 letterwinners from last season, including nine starters and five All-Big 12 performers.
    • The 2021 season is the 26th in program history; over the first 25, OSU posted a 302-167-56 (.629) record. Head coach Colin Carmichael entered his 17th season at the helm in 2021 with a 219-87-43 mark.
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Scouting The Roadrunners
    • UTSA is coming off a 3-7-1 season in which it only played a shortened spring schedule. Abby Kassal, the Roadrunners' leading scorer a year ago with four goals, returns in 2021.    • The Roadrunners are led by head coach Derek Pittman, who owns a 17-24-4 record over his first three seasons at UTSA.
    • OSU is 2-0 all time against UTSA, defeating the Roadrunners by a 5-0 margin in Stillwater in 2016 and then picking up a 6-0 victory in San Antonio the following year.
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Scouting The Panthers
    • Pittsburgh returns all 11 starters from last season's 11-5-0 team, including Amanda West, who led the Panthers with 13 goals and seven assists in 2020-21.    • Randy Waldrum begins his fourth season at Pitt with a 24-27-4 record leading the program. The coaching veteran of nearly three decades has won over 420 games in his collegiate head coaching career, which also includes stints at Tulsa, Baylor and Notre Dame.
    • OSU has never faced Pitt on the soccer pitch.
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Winning Is A Habit
   Now in its 26th season, Oklahoma State soccer has built itself into an established winner.    • OSU has earned a berth in the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship 12 of the last 15 years (beginning in 2006) and six of the last eight.
    • From 2006-11, the Cowgirls earned six-straight NCAA tourney bids and advanced to at least the second round each time, including back-to-back Elite Eight appearances in 2010 and 2011.
    • From 2008-11, OSU celebrated four consecutive Big 12 championships — two regular season (2008, '11) and two tournament ('09, '10). The Cowgirls also won regular season titles in 2017 and 2019.
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Milestone
    Colin Carmichael recorded his 200th career win with OSU's 2-0 victory at Texas on Oct. 11, 2019. Carmichael has spent all 17 of his seasons as a head coach in Stillwater.    Carmichael entered the 2021 season with 219 career wins, ranking third among active Big 12 coaches in wins at their current school behind only Nikki Izzo-Brown, who opened the season with 362 wins in 25 seasons at West Virginia, and Mark Francis, who amassed 242 victories in his first 22 seasons at Kansas.
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Home Sweet Home
    In three seasons at Neal Patterson Stadium, OSU has compiled a 23-5-1 record (.810) on its home turf, including an 8-1-0 mark last season.    The Cowgirls went 10-0-1 on their home field in 2019, the seventh time in program history OSU has gone undefeated at home in a season. Seven of those wins came via shutout, and OSU did not allow a goal in its first five home matches.
    OSU was 84-16-10 (.809) at the Cowgirl Soccer Complex from 2008-17 and was 142-40-17 (.756) all time on its former home turf.
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Scoring Punch
    OSU ranked seventh nationally with 40 goals last season, and all eight players who combined for that total return in 2021.    The Cowgirls' scoring attack is led by the big three of Olyvia Dowell, Grace Yochum and Gabriella Coleman, a trio that held down the top three scoring spots in the Big 12 in 2020-21. Dowell and Yochum both had 12 goals, a total that ranked sixth in the NCAA, while Coleman found the back of the net nine times.
    In 2019, OSU was 14th nationally with 50 goals as it averaged 2.27 goals per game.
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    In a preseason vote of the conference's head coaches, OSU was picked to finish third in the Big 12 race in 2021 behind West Virginia and defending champion TCU.    OSU led the league with three Preseason All-Big 12 selections as Olyvia Dowell, Kim Rodriguez and Grace Yochum earned that distinction.
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In The Rankings
    OSU checks in at No. 16 in the United Soccer Coaches Preseason Poll, and the Cowgirls are 17th in theTopDrawerSoccer.com preseason rankings.
   With those standings, the Cowgirls have now appeared in the national rankings for 33 consecutive weeks dating back to the 2019 season.
    A year ago, OSU peaked at No. 4 in the polls during the fall season and came in at No. 14 in the final United Soccer Coaches rankings and No. 12 in the final TopDrawerSoccer.com poll.
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High Five
    Oklahoma State has had five players selected as All-Big 12 Conference performers in each of the last two seasons.    Earning 2020 All-Big 12 First Team honors for the Cowgirls were defender Kim Rodriguez and forward Olyvia Dowell, while defender Charmé Morgan, midfielder Grace Yochum and forward Gabriella Coleman were named to the All-Big 12 Second Team.
    Only four times in program history have five or more Cowgirls garnered all-conference recognition. A program-record seven Cowgirls earned All-Big 12 status in 2011 while OSU also had five All-Big 12 performers in 2010, 2019 and 2020.
    Rodriguez earned All-Big 12 First Team accolades for the second consecutive season in 2020 and is now a three-time all-conference performer in her career. Both distinctions place her in rare company – she is only the sixth player in OSU history to earn first-team status twice or more in a career, and she is just the eighth Cowgirl to be named all-conference three or more times.
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Welcome Back, Nice To See You Again
    Oklahoma State has four "Super Seniors" on its roster in 2021, with Gabriella Coleman, Charmé Morgan, Kim Rodriguez and Hannah Webb each taking advantage of an extra season of eligibility offered by the NCAA due to the COVID-19 pandemic that altered the 2020 season.    Coleman, Rodriguez and Webb are each in their fifth collegiate season (Coleman spent her first two at Mississippi State before transferring), while Morgan is in her sixth year after being granted a medical redshirt in 2018.
    Entering the '21 season, the Cowgirls' Super Seniors had combined to play in 306 games and made 280 career starts.Â
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Clutch
    The Cowgirls' top-scoring duo of Olyvia Dowell and Grace Yochum proved to be timely finding the back of the net to secure OSU wins last season. Yochum led the NCAA with eight game-winning goals with Dowell adding three, and they combined for four golden goals and one that barely staved off extra time.Opponent         Goal Scorer     Goal Time        Final Score
Iowa State         Yochum             87th minute      2-1
West Virginia   Dowell                109:34                 2-1
Texas Tech       Dowell                100th minute    2-1
Saint Louis        Yochum             98th minute      1-0
North Texas      Yochum             103rd minute    4-3
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Elite Company
    Kim Rodriguez became the fifth All-American in Cowgirl Soccer history in 2019 when she was named to the United Soccer Coaches All-America Second Team as a defender. She joined a list of OSU All-Americans that included Yolanda Odenyo, Melinda Mercado, AD Franch and Haley Woodard.West Virginia   Dowell                109:34                 2-1
Texas Tech       Dowell                100th minute    2-1
Saint Louis        Yochum             98th minute      1-0
North Texas      Yochum             103rd minute    4-3
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Elite Company
    Last season, Rodriguez repeated as a second-team All-American to become the fourth Cowgirl to collect multiple All-America accolades in her career, joining Odenyo, Mercado and Franch on that list.
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She's A Giver
    Kim Rodriguez enters the 2021 season seventh on OSU's all-time assists list with 21. She has had at least three assists in each of her four seasons, including a career-best seven in 2019.Â
Internationally Known
    After shining at the youth level for Mexico's national teams and playing in the 2014 and 2016 FIFA U-17 World Cups and the 2018 FIFA U-20 World Cup, Kim Rodriguez was selected for the Mexico National Team in February 2019 and earned her first-career cap as a starter against Italy at the 2019 Cyprus Women's Cup.           Rodriguez played for Mexico at the 2019 Pan American Games, scoring her first-career goal vs. Panama and helping Mexico to a fifth-place finish at the games.
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Scoring In Bunches
    Grace Yochum has established herself as one of the Big 12's top goal scorers, and she enters the 2021 season chasing history as OSU's all-time leading goal scorer.    In 51 career games, Yochum has amassed 27 goals, which is tied for seventh on OSU's all-time list.
    As a freshman in 2018, Yochum tallied four goals. She followed that with 11 as a sophomore and netted 12 last season, a total that ranked sixth in the NCAA.
   Yochum had two streaks of six consecutive games with a goal that spanned last season — Oct. 6, 2019 vs. K-State-Sept. 18, 2020 vs. Iowa State and Nov. 12, 2020 vs. OU-March 27, 2021 vs. OU.
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G Stands For Goals
    Gabriella "G" Coleman has scored 18 goals in her two seasons with the Cowgirls, netting nine goals in both 2019 and 2020-21.    Last season, four of Coleman's goals came in the postseason as she netted two goals each against South Alabama and Texas A&M in the NCAA Women's Soccer Championship. In 2019, she also showed a penchant for scoring when it mattered most, tallying two goals in the Big 12 Soccer Championship and scoring OSU's lone NCAA tourney goal.
    Coleman played her first two collegiate seasons at Mississippi State and scored three goals in 32 games.
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Sophomore Surge
    Olyvia Dowell has added firepower to the OSU attack since stepping on campus in 2019.    As a freshman, Dowell recorded five goals and eight assists, and she followed that with an even more impressive showing as a sophomore.
    Last season, Dowell ranked fifth in the NCAA with 31 points as she tallied 12 goals and seven assists. Her 12 goals tied for the Big 12 lead along with teammate Grace Yochum and ranked sixth nationally; the seven assists topped the conference. Dowell's goal total also marked the most ever goals by an OSU sophomore, and the 31 points was the seventh most in a single season in program history.
    Dowell enters her junior season needing just three assists to move into OSU's career top 10 list.
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Honor Roll
    A list of current Cowgirls who have been recognized with national and conference accolades.    • Kim Rodriguez - TopDrawerSoccer.Com Preseason Best XI First Team (2021); United Soccer Coaches All-America Second Team (2019 & 2020); United Soccer Coaches DI Women's Player of Distinction Award (2020); TopDrawerSoccer.Com Best XI First Team (2020); United Soccer Coaches All-Midwest Region First Team (2019 & 2020); United Soccer Coaches All-South Region Third Team (2018); All-Big 12 First Team (2019 & 2020); All-Big 12 Second Team (2018); Big 12 All-Freshman Team (2017)
    • Grace Yochum - All-Big 12 Second Team (2020); United Soccer Coaches All-Midwest Region Third Team (2020) & Second Team (2019); All-Big 12 First Team (2019); Big 12 All-Freshman Team (2018)Â
    • Olyvia Dowell - TopDrawerSoccer.Com Preseason Best XI Second Team (2021); All-Big 12 First Team (2020); United Soccer Coaches All-Midwest Region Second Team (2020); TopDrawerSoccer.Com Best XI Third Team (2020); Big 12 All-Freshman Team (2019)
    • Charmé Morgan - All-Big 12 Second Team (2019 & 2020); United Soccer Coaches All-Midwest Region Third Team (2020) & Second Team (2019)
    • Gabriella Coleman - All-Big 12 Second Team (2020)
    • Kionna Simon - Big 12 All-Freshman (2020)
    • Grace Dennis - Big 12 All-Freshman (2020)
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Players Mentioned
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