Pairings Are Bittersweet for Cal Lutheran Soccer

The announcement of the NCAA Division III championship soccer pairings late Sunday brought bittersweet news to the Cal Lutheran campus.

Despite the end of its school-record 14-game winning streak earlier in the day, the women’s team received a berth in the West Regionals wild-card round and will play at UC San Diego at 1 p.m. Wednesday. But the men’s team, with an almost identical record, was left out of the playoffs.

With only one of the eight regionals encompassing the North-Central/Far West, bids from the area were at a premium. As a result, only one team from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference was selected.

SCIAC Western Division champion Cal Lutheran (14-4-2) and SCIAC Eastern Division champion Claremont (13-2-4) each finished 9-0-2 in conference play and played to two ties. But Claremont won the overall SCIAC championship Saturday by defeating the Kingsmen in a shootout, 4-1, after two overtime periods and two sudden-death overtimes failed to break a 1-1 tie.

That difference apparently was enough to include the Stags and exclude Cal Lutheran, even though the Kingsmen ended the season with a 2-1 victory over Cal State Northridge on Sunday.

The women’s team (14-4) lost to Cal State San Bernardino on Sunday, 4-1.