Women's soccer team holds off Tyler, advances to semifinals

The Eastern Florida State College women's soccer team advanced to the NJCAA Division I National Tournament semifinals Tuesday evening in Wichita, Kansas.

The No. 4 seed Titans defeated No. 5 seed Tyler Junior College 3-2 in an exciting game to return to the semifinals for the seventh straight season.

Eastern Florida State College got on the board in the 17^th minute as a rebound came to Morgan Gamin and she hit a bullet into the back of the net.

Up 1-0, a miscommunication on the Tyler defense gave Laura Di Mascio a breakaway and she put it past the keeper to make it 2-0 in the 33^rd minute. Five minutes later Lena Borges redirected a corner kick into the corner of the goal and the Titans were up 3-0.

They went into halftime leading the No. 4 seed Tyler Junior College 3-0.

"We were hot in the first half. We knew that they would get their goals and we would have to dig in and they did get their goals. Any Tyler team isn't going down without a fight but once they got the second goal, I think our team buckled down and showed a lot of character holding them off for 20-plus minutes which is no easy task."

Tyler scored their first goal in the 63^rd minute on a nice header from Riley Massey and then less than two minutes later Nagi Higashi made it a one-goal game.

From there it was a highly-contested, back and forth game but the game ended 3-2 and the Titans will advance to the semifinals, playing Arizona Western at 1:30 p.m. EST on Thursday. The semifinal games will be shown on ESPN+.