This past Sunday the women’s soccer team clinched its first ever NCAA tournament berth by winning the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) championship, beating fifth-seeded Hofstra 1-0 in double-overtime.
They did so off the foot of junior forward Liza Rebello, who scored with 5:06 left in the second over time.
Her goal earned her this week’s Huntington News Player of the Week honors.
“We are positive all the time. We play so well as a team now. It’s because we mesh really well. I think this was really great for the program,” she said.
Rebello, a native of New Bedford, said she has been playing soccer for almost her entire life, starting at the age of four. She has always found her home at the forward position. In high school she also played track and basketball.
At Northeastern, Rebello is currently a nursing major. She said she chose Northeastern because she wanted to stay close to home and NU has a good nursing program. After she graduates, she will be the third generation nurse in her family, she said.
“[Balancing my course work and practice] is difficult,” Rebello said. “I would say the biggest challenge is the traveling. We miss a lot of classes and stuff like that. It’s doable. It’s just a lot of work.”
Rebello has been a major contributor for the Huskies this season. She has played in every game this season, starting all but one. She is second on the team for both goals and assists, with seven and three respectively.
More than half of her shots were on goal for the season. Her most important stat is her game winning goals. She leads the team with four for the season, including the most important goal of the season against Hofstra Sunday.
For Rebello, the team’s success this season is even more enjoyable due to the struggles of the previous season, she said. She said she feels that it will give the program more legitimacy in a tough CAA conference. ‘
“We are just really excited,” Rebello said. “Once we got into this new conference it was tough to get people to takes us seriously and to recognize us as a good team and this is one step in achieving that. It definitely did a lot for the program.”
Right now Rebello is looking forward to the soccer team’s NCAA tournament match against Harvard Friday night, she said. These two teams met early in the season when Harvard beat the Huskies 2-1 in overtime. Since then, Huskies have gone 3-0 in overtime opportunities. In the last meeting, was Rebello’s lone goal that tied the game and sent it into overtime.
“It will be exciting,” Rebello said. “We are going to be up for whoever we have to play. We prepare for every game the same way. We will just see what happens and hopefully we do get a chance to get into the second round and play whichever team it happens to be.”
– Nathan Vaughan,
News Staff
