First, the Royals field hockey team did something that, as a program, they had never done: win the Landmark Conference.
Entering postseason play with an 11-7 overall mark and the top seed in the field, the Royals blitzed past Elizabethtown and Susquehanna to win their first Landmark title in program history. With the win, the Royals also nabbed a spot into the NCAA Division III Tournament field for the first time since 1997.
The selection was also historic in another way, as the Royals hosted MIT at Weiss Field on Nov. 13, marking the very first NCAA Postseason event hosted by the University at the Quinn Athletics Campus.
Despite falling in the match, 3-0, the 2019 Royals field hockey team left their mark. In end-of-the-year awards, the field hockey team had five student-athletes named to All-Landmark Conference teams, as head coach Colleen Moyer was named the conference’s Coach of the Year, as well.
Not to be outdone was the performance the women’s soccer team put together over the final month of the season.
Entering the Landmark Conference playoffs as the number three seed, women’s soccer went on the road and avenged regular season defeats to Elizabethtown and Susquehanna to capture their third Landmark title in four years and the seventh in program history.
The win catapulted the Royals into the NCAA Division III Tournament, where in the first round, they got past previously unbeaten Centre on penalty kicks after the match remained tied at 3-3 after 110 minutes of action. In PK’s, Scranton advanced, 5-4.
In the second round against host Ohio Northern, the Royals fought hard all match, keeping Ohio Northern off the scoreboard for 110 minutes. But, in a penalty kick scenario for the second straight day, Ohio Northern advanced over the Royals by a 4-2 ledger.
Finishing with a final 12-5-4 and with another Landmark Conference title and NCAA Tournament appearance down, the Royals women’s soccer team cleaned up in All-Landmark Conference award honors, with six players earning either First or Second Team accolades.
One of the Royals’ First Team selections was defender Rebecca Russo, who was also named the Landmark Conference’s Senior Scholar-Athlete for women’s soccer, as she boasts a 3.89 GPA as a nursing major.
