OMAHA - The Illinois State women's soccer team took home 10 individual honors along with the regular season championship trophy at the 2008 State Farm MVC Women's Soccer Championship Banquet Thursday night. Junior Danielle Mutters was named Valley Defensive Player of the Year and was one of eight Redbirds to receive All-Valley recognition.
Mutters and junior Raquel Rattray were both first-team All-Valley selections. Senior Mel Routledge and junior Shannon Eccleston received second-team recognition and junior Ammanda Wisniewski and freshman Sasha Reiber were honorable mention picks. Reiber, Jess Carlson and Natalie McCabe were named to the Valley All-Freshman Team.
ISU's nine All-Valley honors were the second-most in program history, behind only the 12 All-Valley awards the Redbirds collected in 1999. Illinois State and Evansville both took home 10 Valley honors in 2008 (including player and coach of the year honors).
Mutters earned her second All-Valley honor, after being named to the second team in 2007. She is tied for third on the Redbirds with a career-high three goals. All of her goals came on headers off corner kicks. She is the fourth player to win the Valley Defensive Player of the Year award, joining Jenny Williams (1998), Angie Roth (2001) and Melissa Colthrust (2002).
Rattray also had an offensive outburst this season, with nine points on three goals and three assists, all career-high marks. She scored her first-career goal against Loyola and added scores against Butler and Indiana State. She only had two points in her career entering this season on one assist in each of her first two seasons. She was one of five repeat first-team selections.
Routledge leads ISU in goals (7) assists (4) and points (18), tying her career-high marks from her freshman season in all three categories. This season, she moved into second place on the ISU career list in goals (20) assists (12) points (52) and shots (174). She had a streak of four goals in five games during the year and was named Prairie Farms/MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Week Oct. 7. She scored the game-winning goal against Creighton with 1.4 seconds left in regulation.
Eccleston started all 19 games on the Redbird defense. ISU had the second-best goals against average (1.03) and the second-most shutouts (7) in the MVC in 2008. In conference play, all five Redbird wins were shutouts and the `Birds gave up just four goals and 62 shots, the fewest in the Valley.
Wisniewski is tied for second on the team with 10 points on three goals and a career-high four assists. She had three points on a goal and an assist against Green Bay in the second game of the season and had a string of three-straight games with an assist. She scored the decisive goal in ISU's win over Drake in the last game of the season, which gave the Redbirds a share of the MVC regular-season title.
Reiber started the final 10 games of the season for ISU, ending the regular season with a 0.78 goals against average, a .771 save percentage and six shutouts. Reiber excelled in Valley play, leading the conference in goals against average (0.67) and shutouts (5). She had a career-high eight saves in a shutout win over Creighton. She won three Brine MVC Defensive Player of the Week awards, the most of any player, and was the only freshman to win a conference weekly award, offensive or defensive, in 2008.
Carlson is tied for second on the team with 10 points on three goals and four assists in her first collegiate seaosn. She leads Redbird freshmen in all three categories. Her first-career goal came in her second-career game against Green Bay and she had scores against Evansville, Missouri State and Eastern Illinois.
McCabe has four points on one goal and two assists. She recorded her first point in the first game of her career against IPFW with an assist. She added another assist against Missouri State and scored her first-career goal against Eastern Illinois.
Illinois State hopes to bring home another trophy before the weekend is done in Omaha. The second-seeded Redbirds take on sixth-seeded Indiana State Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the semifinals of the State Farm MVC Tournament. No. 1 Evansville and No. 4 Missouri State will play the other semifinal at 5 p.m.
