The South Carolina State soccer team, 10-6-3 overall (3-2-1 Great West Conference), assured of the first winning season in the program’s history, will try to bring a conference title to the school as the Lady Bulldogs open play Friday in the GWC tournament at Newark, NJ, with NJIT as host.

When second-year head coach Glad Bugariu’s team opens play in the three-day tourney against Houston Baptist Friday at 5 p.m., five GWC All-Conference performers will be among the players taking the field for SC State.

They include forward Sasha Bender (Sr., S. China, MA), midfielders Janine Francois (Sr., Trinidad) and Brooke Ehinger (Jr., Long Beach, CA) defender Stephanie Searle (Fr., Ontario, Canada) and goal keeper Alechia Brothers (Sr., Charleston, SC).

The Lady Bulldogs, with 16 newcomers on the 2009 team, set a school record with 10 victories this year, four more than any other team won since the program was started in 1999.

Despite a youthful team, Bugariu gives his team a chance at winning this weekend’s tourney.

“I think we are talented enough to win the tournament,” he said before his team departed for New Jersey. “It will be a very competitive tournament but we are looking at it as three finals. You have to win your first game or you are out, so we are taking it one game at a time. To begin, our focus is on Houston Baptist.

“We enter the tournament as the third seed,” he continued, “so the pressure is not on us, but we have to play really well each day to have a chance to move to the next round.”

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