Thirty-four to three. It sounds like the score of a lopsided football game, but for Ithaca’s female soccer players, it is a testament to their complete and utter dominance this season. During a six-game winning streak from Sept. 9–25, that was the combined score of the Bombers and their victims.

The 16–5–2 squad was the most successful of the fall teams this season, but they didn’t necessarily expect it to be that way. The team lost its all-time leading scorer, Chelsey Feldman ’09, and starting goalkeeper Aimee Meacham ’09. With the loss of those players, the team expected to rely on senior forward Winnie Adrien and junior goalkeepers Alyssa Sotomayor and Jessica Platt.

However, Adrien appeared in only seven games because of an early-season ankle injury, and with that, the team lost a good portion of its offensive firepower. The team did not slow down, however, and filled the void immediately. Senior Amy Scheffer, a midfielder not usually known as a major goal-scoring threat, stepped into the role and ended up leading the squad with 16 goals.

“I knew I had to take on a big role coming into the season,” Scheffer said. “But when Winnie got hurt in our first scrimmage against Cornell, it was a huge loss. There were a lot of holes to fill in the offense.”

Despite the adversity of injuries and star players graduating, the Bombers tore through their regular season, going undefeated within the Empire 8 conference and reaching the NCAA playoffs for the seventh consecutive season.

The team took down Muhlenberg College 1–0 in the NCAA regional tournament.

The following day, the Bombers played in another thriller as they took on host No. 6 William Smith College in the regional finals. After a defensive struggle, the 0–0 game came down to penalty kicks, which the Bombers won 5–4.

Freshman forward Rachael Palladino said these were some of the most thrilling games she’s ever played in.

“During the games we weren’t nervous or scared,” she said. “It was just so intense that we never stopped playing. We knew we weren’t going to end our season on that day.”

A 2–1 overtime victory against No. 11 Rowan University had the Bombers in the NCAA quarterfinals for the third straight season, but they came up short against The College of New Jersey, losing 1–0.

While the squad fell in the same spot for the third straight year, Scheffer said the team could go further in the future.

“The program is built here for soccer,” she said. “They have the potential to do just as well or even better.”