The University of Chicago won a men’s soccer NCAA championship unlike any other on Saturday.
With a 2-0 win over Williams College in the NCAA Division III final, Maroons head coach Julianne Sitch became the first woman in college sports history to win a national men’s soccer championship.
Gatorade shower and all.
Robbie Pino and Ryan Yetishefsky scored the winning goals, while Chicago goalkeeper Will Boyes notched his third straight clean sheet.
The win completed an undefeated 22-0-1 season for Chicago, whose lone non-win came against New York University on Oct. 28. Overall, the outscored the opposition 51-11. That’s a strong way to start your career as a college head coach.
Chicago picked Sitch, a Chicago native, to lead its program in April 2022 after two previous stints as an assistant coach with the school. She has also worked as an assistant coach for the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars and head coach of the Red Stars Reserves, as well as an assistant women’s soccer coach for Illinois-Chicago.
Before her coaching career, Sitch was a star player at DePaul and still holds the school’s all-time total points and assists record. Her professional career lasted 13 years, with three different stints on the Red Stars.
Clearly, she’s not a person who minds working in Chicago, and now she’s made history doing it.
