Abilene, TX - Hardin-Simmons' women's soccer team won its fifth straight American Southwest Conference title with a 2-0 win over UT Tyler, Sunday afternoon at the HSU Soccer Complex.

The Cowgirls, playing in front of a bigger than usual crowd on a beautiful 80 degree day, dominated most of the action throughout the game. HSU outshot UTT 12-4 and had seven shots on goal compared to one for UTT.

HSU had a couple of near misses on corner kicks and actually had a goal called off for a foul in the early going. The Cowgirls got on the board in the 34th minute when Lindsay Cogburn scored off a rebound of a Morgan Loyd shot that had hit the crossbar. Loyd was taking a direct kick and the ball bounced right to Cogburn on the rebound, who hammered it past UTT goalkeeper Sam Fraser.

HSU, who has the advantage of a 15-20 mile per hour wind, led just 1-0 at the half.

It didn't matter, because the Cowgirl backline of Laura Newbrough, Becca Gault, Regan Cappella and Kelly Watson, did an amazing job of keeping the Patriots from getting anything close to on-goal. In fact, the Patriots best scoring chance came when they sent in a ball deep from near midfield that took off in the wind and bounced off the post.

In the 72nd minute the Cowgirls put the game away with a nice scoring play that saw Morgan Loyd center a pass to senior Beth Craig's foot who put it past Fraser for the Cowgirls second goal.

Christi Carr pitched her 13th shutout of the season in goal.

HSU will now advance to the NCAA Tournament with the pairings announced on Monday morning. The Cowgirls are 19-1 on the year and are winners of 17 games in a row, including six straight shut outs. UTT ended its season with a record of 13-4-3.

Loyd, Watson and Craig joined Newbrough the All-Tournament team. Newbrough was named the MVP.

Chad Grubbs