While a lot of national media that cover college sports are switching over from covering fall sports to covering winter sports, that doesn’t mean the fall season has concluded. There were still conference tournaments and national tournaments going on when the winter season kicked off in mid-November. In the case of the Gaels, the volleyball team was playing in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship Tournament and the men’s soccer team was gearing up to play in the NCAA after winning the MAAC Championship in men’s soccer.
Last time we had checked in with the volleyball team, they had just finished up their regular season. A 10-12 record by the end of the season was good enough for the team to make the MAAC Championship Tournament as the eighth and final seed in the tournament.
Their opening round game saw them take on the fifth-seeded Sacred Heart Pioneers. Despite being the lower-seeded team and being big underdogs, the Gaels were able to pick up a win. It was a decisive win too, sweeping the Pioneers 3-0. The star players for the game against Sacred Heart were both Taylor Timko and Grace Elher, who had 12.5 points and 12
points respectively.After beating Sacred Heart, the Gaels would play the fourth-seeded Canisius Golden Griffins. The Gaels were not able to continue their potential Cinderella run, losing to the Griffins 1-3. As for any awards, the only one saw Mija Jegers, who has been a star player for the Gaels in her freshman season, be named to the All-MAAC Rookie team. While the men’s soccer team had already received their regular season awards, they still had at least one and potentially more games to play in the NCAA Tournament. Their one
guaranteed game came on Nov. 21, when the team would travel to Burlington, Vermont to take on the Vermont Catamounts. The Gaels would go down early and would never be able to come back, ending up losing their game 5-0, which would eliminate them from the NCAA Tournament, a tournament in which Vermont would head all the way to the semifinals at the very least. Despite a sour end to the season, the men’s soccer team was able to represent Iona in a major postseason tournament, the only Division I team to do so in the fall season
