Written by Matthew Johns for the Cleveland State Department of Athletics

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland State women's soccer team earned its first Horizon League tournament berth since 2015 and will be the No. 6 in the tournament. The team will be on the road taking on third-seeded IUPUI at 7:00 pm on Monday in a game that will be shown live on ESPN3.

The teams met in the opening game of the Horizon League season this year with IUPUI earning a 1-0 victory at home in double overtime.

The Vikings finished 9-9 overall and 5-4 in the Horizon League this year, a quick turnaround from their 5-12 mark (2-7 HL) finish a year ago.

CSU's turnaround came under the tutelage of first-year head coach Dallas Boyer, who said the goal from the beginning was to make the Horizon League tournament, but they now must quickly change gears.

"The talking points this week are to change the goals now that we're in, to not just settle and be happy we're there, but to regroup and get ourselves prepared to go and hopefully make some noise," Boyer said.

Under Boyer, the Vikings averaged almost two more shots per game and a half more goals per game than last season. This led to 10 more total goals on the season (27) compared to last year (17).

Boyer credited this to style of play. He said the team has put an emphasis on getting the ball early and possessing the ball more, as well as players on all levels producing more on offense.

"It's a lot of little things, but all of those things have added up to us doing as well as we have on that side of the ball," Boyer said.

Junior midfielder Ashley Thiss credited the team's increase in production to being in better shape and tougher coaching methods from Boyer.

"Conditioning has definitely been harder," Thiss said. "We are so much more fit this year from the conditioning and I think we have become more of a possession team, which has been huge for us."

Going into the tournament, the team plans to continue playing how they have all season. Senior midfielder Katie Bainbridge said one goal for the team is to make it beyond the quarterfinals.

"We definitely want to be able to – because we've never made it past the quarterfinals - make it to the semifinals and then keep going from there."

A win on Monday night at IUPUI would send the Vikings into the semifinals of the Horizon League tournament and a match-up with top-seeded Milwaukee on Thursday night.

The championship will be played on Saturday night in Milwaukee.