A Big Win and A Good Group

The US Women's National Team just beat Italy in a home-home series to get a bid to the Women's World Cup in Germany next summer. The draw for the 16-team tournament was held this afternoon. The Women's World Cup is set up just as the men's tournament is--with a round robin first round and the top two teams advancing to a single-elimination bracket.

The United States is in Group C with North Korea, Sweden, and Colombia.

Find the other 3 groups and the schedule for next summer here

The Offseason Came Too Soon

The Foresters are still in recovery mode after an extremely disappointing loss to eventual MWC Champion Lawrence University in the conference semifinal match.

Some of us appear to be in the throes of the grieving process and I'm hoping that the final stage of the process: Acceptance, is just around the corner. In the meantime it's hard to come up with anything fun, witty, informative, creative, or playful regarding our season. We had a good run and it ended too soon.

Congrats to Lawrence who beat us 4-3 and Carroll University 2-1, before falling to Wheaton (IL) College in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

You can follow the DIII tournament here. The DI Women's Tournament bracket is here and their Final Four will be on ESPN2/U in a couple weeks.

In addition, the US Women's National Team experienced some rare and unexpected difficulty in regional World Cup qualifying when they lost to Mexico a couple weeks ago for the first time in their history. They recovered with a 5-0 rout of Costa Rica, but still need to beat Italy to advance to the World Cup in Germany next summer. The first of the two-game series is being played in Italy this Saturday, November 20. They will play at Toyota Park in Chicago on November 27. Should they beat Italy it will mean the #1 team in the world is the last to qualify for the 2011 World Cup. Follow the action on ESPN3.com.