Race and Koh earn major honors, five Wildcats land all-league nods
BOSTON, MA - Wheelock College field hockey senior Meredith Race (Marion, MA/Old Rochester Regional) and head coach Kyoungho Koh both earned major New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) awards on Monday, when the squad also drew the league's sportsmanship honor and five Wildcats landed on the all-conference first team.
Race, the NECC Goalkeeper of the Year, earned her second career all-league laurel, posting a career-low 1.83 goals-against average while leading the conference in both GAA and save percentage (.771). She posted a trio of wins while appearing in 13 games, making 12 starts. Race yielded one goal or less during nine of her outings.
Senior midfielder Michaela Ross (Mansfield, MA/Mansfield) landed on the NECC All-Conference first team for the second straight year, while senior forward Kara Widdison (Greenfield, MA/Greenfield), junior back Alanna Pihl (Franconia, NH/Profile) and sophomore forward Despina Savvoulides (Norwalk, CT/Norwalk) each earned their initial league honors.
Ross played a transitional role between an offense that scored at least three goals six times and a defense that yielded two goals or fewer on 11 occasions. She finished with one goal and a pair of assists this fall, while Pihl started all 16 games in the backfield as one of only four Wildcats to start each contest.
Savvoulides is second in the NECC with four game-winning goals, tied for second with 13 goals, and stands third with 29 points. She scored in five of Wheelock's eight NECC games. Widdison is tied for seventh in the league with seven goals despite making 12 of her 14 appearances as a reserve. Four of her tallies came in conference action.
For the second straight season, Koh was named NECC Coach of the Year. She has led Wheelock to the postseason in each of her three seasons at the helm of the program, as the Wildcats are 15-9 in league play during her tenure.
Koh's charges went 7-9 overall this fall and 5-3 in the conference, while her team won the NECC Sportsmanship Award for the first time. Wheelock earned a sportsmanship honor during each of its final three years in the North Atlantic Conference (NAC), from 2005 to 2007.
