Seniors Grace Ehlert and Kaci Karl have made the national championship game in three of their four seasons with WashU. (Photo courtesy of Brian Bishop Photography)

After 90 minutes of play between the No. 1 WashU women’s soccer team and the No. 7 University of Chicago in the NCAA Division III women’s soccer Final Four round, the two teams were tied. After 20 minutes of sudden-death overtime, no team had scored the game-winning goal. Through round after round of an epic, never-ending penalty shootout, both teams came close to tasting victory or watching their national championship hopes vanish into the Virginia night. 

That is, until the 14th shootout round. When UChicago’s Indira Naylor stepped up to the spot, WashU sophomore goalkeeper Kassidy Lanthier stared down her opponent, unfazed, with the calm demeanor she had expressed all shootout long. Naylor’s shot, aimed for the bottom right corner of the goal, fell right into Lanthier’s outstretched arms. After an excruciating 200 minutes of a soccer stalemate against UChicago dating back to a 1-1 draw on Nov. 8, WashU finally defeated their conference rivals, booking the Bears a ticket to their third straight national championship game. 

“I blacked out for most of these [penalties], because I’m just so into it,” Lanthier said. “For [the last] one, I thought, ‘Okay, she went that way before, so maybe she’ll go that way again.’ … And it just ended up working out like that.” 

In every moment where the Bears looked like they were headed for their first loss in 733 days, the top team in Division III found a way to stay in the game. Now, after eking out the semifinal win, WashU will face No. 2 Emory University in the national championship game Saturday, Dec. 6 at 11 a.m. central, with WashU seeking its second consecutive national championship and its third in program history. 

“It just goes to speak for the 33 women out there with me,” senior forward Ella Koleno said. “This is the most supportive team. We always say that it’s a family, but it really is.”

The Bears played under intense pressure from the opening whistle. Much like the Bears and Maroons’ last matchup, UChicago got out to an early lead, and the Maroons’ defense extinguished the most potent offense in the UAA for the rest of the first half.

Lanthier made her first of many marks on the game in the 52nd minute. With the Maroons seeking their second goal of the game, the sophomore transfer from the University of Iowa made a critical save to keep the game tied. After Lanthier’s save, the momentum swung back towards WashU, and the Bears began to win their battles in the midfield. 

In the 67th minute, first-year defender Monica Morales-Martinez took a shot from far outside the box. Morales-Martinez’s strike hit off Maroons’ goalkeeper Sophia Sasaki’s glove, clanging off the crossbar and falling at Koleno’s boot. The Bears forward buried the rebound in the back of the net for the equalizer. 

“That was a great chance by Monica,” Koleno said. “She’s been awesome all season, and we’re just taught to finish at the keeper, and that the play’s not over until it’s over.” 

From this point forward, the game played out as almost a carbon copy to the Bears’ and Maroons’ draw in early November. WashU dominated possession and forced the Maroons to play a low block. Despite outshooting the Maroons 13-8 in the second half, the Bears couldn’t find their golden opportunity to take the lead. Unlike the regular season, where games end in a draw, this 1-1 matchup required overtime. 

While WashU outshot UChicago 6-0 in the two overtime periods, both teams struggled to generate dangerous chances, and the game remained tied. For the first time since the 2023 Final Four, WashU women’s soccer’s NCAA tournament fate was on the line in a penalty shootout. 

Lanthier’s heroics in the penalty shootout propelled the Bears to a national championship game. (Photo courtesy of Brian Bishop Photography)

The Bears’ hero in that match two years ago was All-American goalkeeper Sidney Conner. Now with Conner serving as a graduate assistant coach, it was Lanthier’s turn to try and send WashU to a national final. 

“[Conner’s] definitely my biggest mentor,” Lanthier said. “Filling her shoes, everyone around me has been backing me all season, and they’ve given me so much confidence that I really needed to succeed and now to be able to play in a national final.” 

With the first kick, Morales-Martinez shot the ball over the net, handing UChicago an early break. Lanthier saved UChicago’s second-round try, but sophomore Cami Colpitts’ miss on the ensuing kick gave the Maroons the lead right back. WashU made its next two spot kicks, so Maroons forward Greer Reineke stepped up to the spot with a chance to bring UChicago to its first national championship game since 2017.

Reineke skied the penalty over the net, however, and the teams played on.

For every blow WashU dealt to UChicago, UChicago dealt one right back. In round eight, junior forward Madi Foley missed her penalty over the net, giving the Maroons another opportunity to win the game. This time, Lanthier redirected the potential game-winning kick off the crossbar, before it took a fortuitous bounce away from the net. No winner yet.

 After each team exhausted their whole list of 10 shooters, the deadlock persisted, and the teams began a second cycle through their lineups — Morales-Martinez and Colpitts converted their second penalty attempts. Everything that could possibly have happened to extend this rivalry game as long as humanly possible, happened. 

In round 14, junior midfielder Jadyn Aling, who didn’t play a single minute in the match, stepped up to the penalty spot for the second time. Once again, Aling scored her penalty with ease. 

“We have been practicing [penalty] kicks, so we know where we want to go and what we want to do,” Aling said. “I know my sisters have my back, so once I put in the first one, I knew I could do it again.” 

Aling’s goal put the pressure on Naylor to score. With Lanthier’s game-sealing save, the Bears mobbed their sophomore netminder. The team was visibly emotional, with the stress of the shootout behind them and their sights set on another national championship. They’ll face Emory — who the Bears beat 2-1 on Oct. 26 —  in an all-UAA showdown in the national championship on Dec. 6. 

“The one thing we knew coming into this year, and this particular weekend, was that there are four fantastic soccer teams here,” head coach Jim Conlon said. “We’ve had the privilege of seeing Emory already in conference season … so it should be a great game.”