The payoff for successful seasons will arrive this week when the Stanford field hockey and women's soccer teams begin NCAA tournament action at opposite ends of the country.
In field hockey, the Cardinal (8-6) will visit College Park, Md., to face host Penn State on Thursday night. It will be Stanford's first postseason appearance since 1991 and the sixth NCAA berth for Cardinal head coach Sheryl Johnson in her 11 years on The Farm.
The Stanford women's soccer team, meanwhile, will remain much closer to home when it opens NCAA tournament action Friday night at Santa Clara University.
The path to the NCAA Final Four is a difficult one for Stanford. Should the nationally No. 9-ranked Cardinal (16-3) get past the Broncos (14-3-2) in the 7 p.m. match at Buck Shaw Stadium, Stanford will visit Virginia. The winner of that match would have to face defending national champion North Carolina (23-0) in a semifinal match Dec. 1 in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Stanford closed out its regular season last weekend by routing Sacramento State, 8-0, and then capping a 7-0 Pacific-10 Conference season with a 4-0 win over visiting Arizona on Sunday.
Sophomore Rita Hermiz had a goal and two assists against Arizona, while freshman Kelly Adamson scored three times against Sacramento State.
Men's golf
The one-two punch of sophomore Tiger Woods and freshman Joel Kribel knocked out the field as Stanford captured its own Fall Invitational on Saturday by 30 strokes over runner-up Kansas.
Woods fired a final-round 3-under-par 68 to finish at 7-under-par 206 to win individual honors. He shot consecutive rounds of 69 during Friday's 36-hole action. Kribel played his best golf of the season by firing rounds of 70-69-68-207 to finish second.
Woods had three eagles during the tournament, including two on the par-5 first hole. Stanford's Conrad Ray, who shot an opening-round 66 and finished tied for fifth at 216, eagled the par-4 11th hole on Saturday by holing out from 125 yards.
Women's volleyball
Stanford clinched its fourth Pac-10 title in the conference's 10-year history by sweeping Washington and Washington State last weekend in Maples Pavilion.
The Cardinal hit .339 as a team in a 15-12, 15-1, 15-7 victory over the Huskies, who grabbed an 11-2 lead in the opening game before giving way to a 13-1 Stanford run.
Against WSU, Stanford received an outstanding hitting performance from sophomore Lisa Sharpley (.692 on 10 kills and one error in 13 attempts) as the Cardinal overpowered the Cougars, 15-6, 15-7, 15-8.
The sweep enabled Stanford to improve to 15-0 in the Pac-10, its earliest clinching of the conference crown ever. The No. 4-ranked Cardinal (22-2) took a 19-match winning streak into a Pac-10 match Tuesday night against Cal and will close its conference this season at Oregon and Oregon State. Stanford will play USF at home Nov. 21.
"The schedule eases up now," Stanford coach Don Shaw said. "This is a good time for us to rest up and get ready for the NCAA tournament.
Water polo
After dropping three straight matches on the road, struggling defending NCAA champion Stanford has only one chance of earning a berth in the NCAA tournament--that being winning the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament Nov. 24-26 in Long Beach.
The Cardinal dropped an 11-10 match at Long Beach State last Thursday, gave up five goals to Gunn graduate Corbin Graham in a 12-11 loss at UCLA, then dropped a 13-9 decision at USC.
--Keith Peters
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