The NCAA selection committee gave Long Beach State’s women’s soccer team the perfect 10-year anniversary present: its first-ever NCAA Tournament selection.
“It’s been a wild but satisfying four years and you know what? We’re not done, we’re just getting started,” head coach Mauricio Ingrassia told fans, friends and family of the players gathered at The Nugget Monday night.
The 25th-ranked 49ers (14-4-4) will play the University of San Diego (14-4-2) Friday night in the first round of the 64-team NCAA Women’s College Cup. The teams will play at 8 p.m. at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.
Fellow Big West member and tournament champion UC Santa Barbara (12-6-3) will play 6th-ranked and top-seeded Stanford (22-7) in the Stanford Regional.
LBSU, the first Big West team to win the regular-season title in three consecutive seasons, was placed in the UCLA Regional along with the Toreros, the top-seeded UCLA Bruins (18-0-2) and Fresno State Bulldogs (12-8-2). The ‘Niners and Toreros are expected to meet after the conclusion of the Bruins-Bulldogs match-up. The winners will meet Sunday in the second round at Drake Stadium at 1 p.m.
“To have them basically play at home right here in L.A., we’ll buy a couple hundred student tickets and get [the students] up there for them,” Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander said.
While awaiting their fate, the 49ers agonized through a commercial break before roaring at the sight of seeing “Long Beach State” flash across the big screen.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” senior Hayley Bolt said. “Yesterday’s [game] was like the bitter and this is the sweet. Being apart of an evolving program, finally we reached our ultimate goal. After seeing our name on the screen, you can take that sigh of relief.”
Ingrassia added, “I had a feeling we were going to be in, but no matter what when you’re sitting here and watching it — and they keep cutting to commercial — it’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me?”
The first-round affair will be a re-match of a 1-0 loss to San Diego on Oct. 8, the last loss dealt to the 49ers in the season.
“It’s kind of ironic because our last loss was against San Diego,” Bolt said. “We’ve always been evenly matched, so it should be a really exciting game and we’re going to come out for revenge.”
The at-large selection ended three years of disappointment for the program and Ingrassia’s seniors, which comprise his first-ever recruiting class.
“I just think that it was a process of maturity,” Ingrassia said. “Just a matter of growing each and every year. Last year for me was disappointing, but the first three years it was about getting experience.”
Alexander added, “It’s been a highly-successful program from the beginning. Mauricio has done an outstanding job; the young ladies deserve every bit of it. They have played exceptionally well every year, and this is a fitting progression for our program.”
Going dancing: LBSU earns first-ever NCAA selection
Long Beach State to meet the University of San Diego on Friday at UCLA’s Drake Stadium at 8 p.m.
Published: Monday, November 10, 2008
Updated: Tuesday, November 11, 2008
 "Photo: Martine Cajucom")
Martine Cajucom
Breanna Truelove (right to center), Kristen Kiefer, Cat Gray, Lindsay Bullock and the rest of the LBSU women's soccer team and supporters react after finding out that they received an at-large bid into the NCAA Women's College Cup.
Duke A. Rescola
Daily Forty-Niner Opinions editor
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