When the UCF women’s soccer team lost starting defenders Brooke Mulroney and Kalena Bellini to devastating injuries within days of each other at the start of Big 12 Conference play in September, it would have been easy for outsiders to write off the Knights. Especially after the team lost a road game at Arizona, 1-0, on their first outing without Mulroney and Bellini on the field.
Their mentality? Don’t tell us the odds.
“I told the team from the very beginning, no successful team goes through any journey that is easy. This is part of our journey,” UCF head coach Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak says. “How are we going to respond to this? You have the ability to go out there and play for them. Believe in how good you are. Visualize doing great things and the rest will follow.”
From that point on, the Knights closed the regular season with a nine-match unbeaten streak, helping them clinch the No. 7 seed and hosting rights in the NCAA Tournament.
UCF will hold a first-round game on Friday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at the UCF Soccer Complex against Maine, who just won its third-straight America East championship title.
The Knights are one of a conference-record eight teams from the Big 12 selected to participate in this year’s NCAA Tournament.
“After what we went through on a weekly basis in the Big 12 this year — a historical year with how many teams earned postseason bids — what excites me as we head into the NCAA Tournament is we’ve seen the best in the country. We are part of that,” Roberts Sahaydak says. “Obviously it’s one game at a time, and that starts with Maine, but the team should be feeling really confident because they are prepared from the physical and tactical and mental tests they’ve had all season.”
UCF’S NCAA TOURNAMENT HISTORY
This year’s postseason appearance will mark UCF’s first as a member of the Big 12 Conference and first since 2022 when the Knights advanced to the tournament’s second round.
Friday’s home match will mark the 11th time that UCF has hosted an NCAA Tournament First Round competition and the program’s first since 2017.
In all, it will be the program’s 23rd all-time appearance in the NCAA Division I Championship. UCF ranks among the NCAA’s top 25 winningest teams nationally since the inception of Division I women’s soccer in 1982.
TICKETS/BROADCAST INFO
General admission tickets are $10 and can be purchased through Ticketmaster at ucfknights.com. The first 100 UCF students with valid UCF ID will receive free entry (first come, first serve). Stadium gates open at 6 p.m.
The match will air on ESPN+.
