The University of Maine’s defending two-time America East champion women’s soccer team went into Thursday night’s regular season finale against New Hampshire needing a win to ensure a berth in the six-team tournament.
The Black Bears edged the University of New Hampshire 2-1 and that win, coupled with Bryant’s 1-1 tie against UMass Lowell, catapulted them past UNH and Bryant into the fourth seed.
They will turn around and play fifth seed New Hampshire again at noon Sunday at the New Balance Soccer Complex in Orono.
UMaine is 4-7-3 overall and 3-3-2 in America East, while UNH is 4-5-7 and 2-2-4.
The teams met in the championship game last year, when UMaine triumphed 3-0.
Interestingly, the same goes for UMass Lowell and Bryant, as they will also play for the second time in four days in the other quarterfinal with third seed UMass Lowell entertaining Bryant at 4 p.m. Sunday.
Top seed Binghamton and second seed Vermont received first-round byes.
The UMaine-UNH winner will travel to Binghamton for a 5 p.m. semifinal next Thursday with the UMass Lowell-Bryant victor travelling to Vermont for a 6 p.m. semifinal.
The conference championship game will be on Nov. 9 at the home field of the higher seeded team.
On Thursday, the Black Bears built a 2-0 lead on a UNH own goal in the first half and a Luise Reinwald goal in the second half and survived an Abbi Maier penalty kick and a late UNH surge to earn the victory.
UMaine took a 1-0 lead when Britta Denny’s cross deflected into the net off a UNH player.
Junior Reinwald scored her first goal of the season and third of her career when she directed the rebound of a Julie Lossius shot into the net. Lossius’ shot hit the cross bar.
Elena Barenberg made six saves on 15 UNH shot attempts, while Sonja Zeepvat had four saves on 16 UMaine shot attempts.
