Field Hockey Earns Opportunity To Defend Title Sunday Afternoon

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MILLERSVILLE, PA – For 11-year head coach Amy Cohen, undoubtedly the most tumultuous two-year period in her professional coaching career comes full circle when her West Chester Golden Rams field hockey squad takes the field at Biemesderfer Stadium Sunday afternoon in the 2021 NCAA Division II National Championship Game.
 
You see, West Chester (17-4) won the 2019 national championship on this very same turf nearly 24 months ago. However, the journey from that game to this one on Sunday was anything but typical. Nevertheless, the Golden Rams must try to find a way to solve Shippensburg (19-0), which has beaten West Chester each of the three times they have met this fall.
 
Tickets to the national championship game can be purchased online by clicking HERE. If you can't make it to Millersville for the game, it will be streamed live HERE. Barnaby's on High Street in West Chester will also be holding a West Chester Watch Party for both the field hockey and women's soccer squads on Sunday afternoon.
 
History is on the Golden Rams' side. They are a perfect 7-0 in national championship games. Cohen has three of those wins (2011, 2012 and 2019). A Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) school has won the Division II national championship nine consecutive years. However, the PSAC Tournament champion has not gone on to win the national championship since West Chester turned the trick in 2012 – Shippensburg defeated West Chester in the PSAC Championship Game two weeks ago.
 
These two schools alone have won seven of the last nine Division II national championships (Shippensburg 4; West Chester 3). In a lot of ways, it was only inevitable that these two conference rivals would meet on the last day of the season in Millersville.
 
HOW THEY GOT HERE …
West Chester received the third seed in the NCAA Tournament and defeated Adelphi, 4-1, at home on Nov. 13 in a steady rain. The Golden Rams then knocked off second seed and Northeast-10 champion, Assumption, 3-0, on Friday afternoon in the semifinals.
 
Shippensburg received the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament and received a bye to the national semifinals. There were some anxious moments, but the Raiders prevailed 2-1 over East Stroudsburg on Friday night to advance to its first national title game since 2018.
 
GOLDEN RAMS RECORD WATCH …
Grad student Caitie McNamara (Buderim, Australia) will play in her 84th career game Sunday afternoon, setting a new school record for appearances by a position player. She will move past Rachal Toppi and Alexis Versak, who each played in 83 games during their illustrious careers. Nobody in the historic past has donned the Purple & Gold more times than McNamara.
 
Freshman Valerie van Kuijck (Denbosch, The Netherlands) has 21 goals in her first college season. She is one shy of the school's freshman scoring record set by Rachal Toppi in 2014 when the former national player of the year tallied 22 times her first year at West Chester.