On a miserably cold, rainy day last December in Cary, N.C., the UCLA women’s soccer team was locked in battle against Florida State University in the NCAA title game. It had been a fierce defensive fight, with neither team managing to put the ball into the net. After 90 minutes of regulation play, the score remained tied, 0-0.

But seven minutes into overtime, the Bruins saw their chance. Junior defender Megan Oyster gambled on a run from the back and completed a perfect pass to sophomore forward Kodi Lavrusky, who scored the game-winning goal. Her jubilant teammates cheered wildly on the sidelines. The Bruins’ 1-0 overtime victory not only brought UCLA its 110th national championship, but also its first in women’s soccer.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh no, please don’t take me down into a dog pile!’ I’m always so terrified because you can’t breathe when you’re at the bottom of those,” Lavrusky says, laughing. “But honestly, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what had just happened, and I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.”

The hardest run

Winning the national title was vindication for the Pac-12 champion Bruins, who had expected a No. 1 regional seeding in the NCAA Tournament but instead received a No. 2 seed. That meant that in their bracket, the Bruins would have to play Stanford (the 2011 national champions) and the University of North Carolina (the 2012 national champions, who had handed UCLA its only loss of the season). To make matters worse, the UNC game would be played on the opponent’s home field, in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The Bruins, however, were steadfast. They beat Stanford in the third round, 2-0, and defeated UNC in a harrowing, 1-0 double-overtime victory in the quarterfinals. UCLA had finally reached the College Cup — soccer’s Final Four — but the hardest work remained.

Next up was No. 1-ranked University of Virginia, and it looked to be a battle between Virginia’s potent offense and UCLA’s top-ranked defense. But the Bruins surprised their opponents by switching their offense and becoming the aggressors. Junior defender Ally Courtnall scored the goal that tied the game at 1-1, and in the tiebreaker, junior goalkeeper Katelyn Rowland made two huge saves. The Bruins won, 1-1 (4-2 on penalty kicks).

The last school standing in UCLA’s way was Florida State University, the Atlantic Coast Conference champions. Despite outshooting the Seminoles 15-5, the Bruins were unable to put them away in regulation. This set the stage for Oyster and Lavrusky, whose golden goal won the game in overtime, 1-0. When it was all over, the Bruins had finished with a 22-1-3 record and a 21-game unbeaten streak.

“We had quite a run,” says UCLA’s first-year Head Coach Amanda Cromwell, laughing. “If you look at the other teams’ runs and their paths to the finals, ours was definitely one of the hardest. If not the hardest.”

She called out several players for their contributions to the Bruins’ title run, including Rowland, Courtnall, Oyster, defensive standout Abby Dahlkemper, junior midfielder Caprice Dydasco and the three captains, midfielders Jenna Richmond, Sam Mewis and Sarah Killion. She also had high praise for freshman forward Darian Jenkins, the team’s leading scorer; sophomore forward Taylor Smith, who was “on fire” during the tournament; and, of course, Lavrusky, who scored the game-winner against Florida State in the finals.

“What makes me so proud of this team is the journey we took; it wasn’t just the end result,” Cromwell says. “Obviously, holding the trophy at the end was awesome, but as time goes by, we’re really going to appreciate what we just did.”

So close, and yet …

The Bruins had come tantalizingly close many times before; since 2000, they had reached the Final Four eight times, but the top prize always eluded them. Knowing that past teams had come so close only seemed to fuel the players’ hunger, and even the loss of Head Coach B.J. Snow — who left UCLA after the 2012–2013 season to coach the U.S. Under-17 Women’s National Team — didn’t dampen their resolve to win a national title.

“I knew that we were a very talented team, but I also knew that talent hadn’t done it for us in the past,” says Katelyn Rowland. “We were frustrated for not getting the results we wanted, and there was just this different attitude and readiness in us that I had never seen before. We were very focused on [title number] 110.”

The 2013–2014 season was different right from the start, beginning with the arrival of Cromwell in May. Before coming to UCLA, she had spent 14 successful years as head coach at the University of Central Florida (UCF), where she guided the Knights to a 203-83-26 record and 11 NCAA Tournament appearances. At the close of the 2012 season, she ranked among the top 25 winningest active coaches and the top 30 all-time winningest coaches in NCAA history. But she wanted more.

“I came to UCLA to win a national championship,” she says. “I knew the talent that was already here, and the potential to bring in more every year gave us the ability to compete for one every year.”

Cromwell brought two staff members with her from UCF: Assistant Coach Joshua Walters and Volunteer Goalkeeper Coach Aline Reis. She also retained Assistant Coach Louise Lieberman ’00, a Bruin letter-winner from 1995–1998 and the only holdover from the previous staff.

“I was very excited to see who was going to be our new coach,” says Jenna Richmond, a senior. “Throughout my college career, I had three different coaches — something I did not expect when I came in as a freshman. Once the team found out that Amanda was going to be our coach, we were really excited because we knew she was successful at her previous school. We knew she would continue the tradition of excellence at UCLA.”

Winning No. 110 for UCLA was on the players’ minds from the start, Abby Dahlkemper says. “We wanted to make history and be known as the first [UCLA women’s] team ever to win a soccer national championship, and we did just that. It feels amazing!”

In the spotlight

Four days after winning the championship, the UCLA women were invited to a taping of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, where Leno acknowledged them on air and invited them backstage for a tour and a photo with him. Cromwell — only the second female soccer head coach ever to capture a national championship — was named Soccer America’s 2013 Women’s Coach of the Year.

Additionally, several Bruins received numerous honors, including Rowland and Dahlkemper, who were named to Soccer America’s MVPs first team, and Jenkins, who was named to Soccer America’s All-Freshman first team. Dahlkemper also was named the NSCAA Scholar All-America Player of the Year, winner of the 2014 Honda Sports Award for Soccer and one of three finalists for the MAC Hermann Trophy, given to the nation’s top soccer player.

Shortly after the season ended, Dahlkemper, Killion, Mewis and Richmond headed to training camp with the U.S. Youth National Team’s Under-23 squad, while Rowland and freshman midfielder Lauren Kaskie were named to the Under-20 squad. UCLA’s junior forward Rosie White plays on the New Zealand National Team, and senior defender Chelsea Stewart, on the Canadian National Team.

It seems hard to believe now, but Ally Courtnall, who was named Defensive MVP of the Final Four, nearly passed on the chance to return to the team when the season started. She had lost passion for the game, she says, and wanted to focus on different things.

“Once Amanda started contacting me, however, I started to reconsider,” Courtnall says. “It took a couple of meetings for me to really think about playing again, but once the coaches said, ‘How would you feel if you were sitting at home on the couch, watching us win a national championship?,’ I knew I needed to play. Amanda made me believe that it was a possibility for the team this year.”

“I don’t think any of us could have predicted just how perfect Amanda ended up being for our program,” Rowland says. “We were obviously very upset about the departure of B.J., but Amanda came in and brought our team together immediately, and what she did was something that was incredible and so special. Yes, she coached us to our very first national championship, but she also brought our team together and we became a genuine family in the end.”

Cromwell believes it was a team of destiny. “Especially when you look back at the draw we had, how we won some of those games,” she says. “It kind of gives me chills thinking about it. It was magical.”