The women’s club soccer team was chosen to compete in the National Championships for women’s collegiate club soccer Nov. 20-21.

Senior captain Alexandra Cerretani said she didn’t think they were going to get the chance to go.

“A week and a half before Nationals, we got an email saying that enough people had dropped out that we were being invited,” she said.

Junior Jacqueline Cardoza said it was just “pure excitement” when she found out they made it to Nationals.

The National Intramural-Recreation Sports Association hosts the tournament, which will be held in Memphis, Tennessee this year.

Making it into the championships is based on a two-bracket system: the open bracket and the championship bracket, Cerretani said.

“The open bracket is mostly bigger schools with big club teams,” she said.

Getting into the tournament for the open bracket system was completely random, based on a lottery, Cerretani said.

During the regular season, the team only lost two games, Cerretani said.

One was against UConn and the other against Dartmouth College.

Last year, the team made it to the regional semifinals, but this year they didn’t make the cut.

“It actually ended up working out because if we went to Regionals we wouldn’t have had the funds to go to Nationals,” Cerretani said.

Cerretani has been on the club soccer team since her first year at UVM, but she has been playing soccer since she was five.

“It’s been a huge part of my life for so long and I couldn’t really imagine my life without it at this point,” Cerretani said.

She said her “initial plan” was to play varsity soccer at a few other schools before she decided to come to UVM four years ago.

Cerretani chose UVM for academic reasons.  None of the other schools she was looking at had an animal science major, Cerretani said.

“It was probably the best decision I have ever made,” Cerretani said. “I can’t imagine having a better group of girls that I would’ve played with anywhere else on a varsity team.”

As a senior, this was Cerretani’s last year on the team, but she said she believes she will be leaving the team in good hands.

“Everyone got along. I think we had the best season since I’ve been here.” she said.

The club soccer team will play a few games in the spring and their regular season will start up again next fall.