Meghan O'Rourke

The Wittenberg women's soccer team was coasting along at 8-0 before coming back down to earth in the last week with two losses in its last three games. All is certainly not lost at this point, however, as the Tigers have almost their entire North Coast Athletic Conference schedule and the postseason tournament still in front of them.

The wake-up call came on Sept. 24 in a 2-1 overtime loss at Westminster. Playing a quality opponent less than 24 hours after defeating Washington & Jefferson, 3-0, the Tigers had a couple of defensive breakdowns and they paid dearly for them. A school record seven-game shutout streak came to an end that night, as did the eight-game win streak, which was just three shy of the 1995 team's mark of 11 in a row to open a season.

After rebounding with a 2-0 win over Wilmington on Tuesday, the Tigers were shutout for the first time this season by fourth-ranked Denison. In a rematch of a classic shootout thriller in the semifinals of last year's NCAC Tournament - which was won by Wittenberg - the Big Red picked up an early goal and made it stand up to get the upper hand on the Tigers in what appears to be a wide open 2005 conference title chase.

The defensive-minded Tigers have yielded just four goals through 11 games in 2005, while they have scored 18. Several players have gotten in on the offensive act, led by sophomore forward Lisa Rusch (Columbus, Ohio/Worthington Kilbourne), who has four goals, three assists and 11 total points. Sophomore forward Amanda Farrell (Loveland, Ohio/Loveland), junior forward Liz Volz (Cincinnati, Ohio/Seton) and senior forward Lindsay Zigler (Columbus, Ohio/Upper Arlington) all have three goals on the season to tie for second on the team. Volz, however, has suffered a season-ending injury.

Defensively, the Tigers have sparkled again, despite the fact that just one of the four backfield starters remains in place from last year's team. Sophomore goalkeeper Meghan O'Rourke (Columbus, Ohio/Worthington Kilbourne) is among the conference and national leaders with a goals against average of 0.36 and a saves percentage of .90.

All of the details about the Tigers, are well documented in game stories found on the team's schedule/results page. Season statistics can be found by clicking here.