The Falcons & the MAC

The Falcons won the MAC Tournament title in both 2004 ... ... and 2005, with the latter crown coming at Cochrane Field.

The fall of 1997 marked the first season of competition for women’s soccer as a conference-sponsored sport. Eight MAC institutions fielded teams that fall. The first season of league women’s soccer sponsorship coincided with Bowling Green’s first year fielding a program at the varsity level.

Buffalo, Central Michigan and Marshall joined the MAC in 1998, and Ball State began competition in 1999. Akron started a women’s soccer program in 2001, bringing the MAC membership in women’s soccer to 13 schools. Marshall left the MAC at the end of the 2004-05 academic year, giving the conference 12 women’s soccer-playing institutions.

The Falcons have enjoyed their fair share of success in the MAC. The 2005 team won the regular-season title for the first time in school history, while BGSU won back-to-back conference tournament titles in 2004 and 2005. The Falcons have appeared in the MAC Tournament’s championship match a league-record 10 times. BG made three-straight trips to title tilts from 2003 to ‘05, and five in a row from 2017-21.

The inaugural MAC Tournament included the top four regular-season finishers, and the tourney doubled in size for the 1998 season. In that ’98 campaign, BGSU advanced to the semifinal round before losing in overtime to eventual champion Northern Illinois. All seven of BGSU’s MAC Tournament losses have come at the hands of the eventual tourney champion.

In 2000, the Falcons won a pair of tourney matches to advance to the championship contest for the first time. In that final, the Orange and Brown lost to Miami, again in OT.

The 2002 season saw the Falcons picked to finish ninth, but BG wound up fourth in the regular-season standings. That squad hosted a MAC Tournament match for the first time in school history and won that contest before falling to MU on the RedHawks’ home field in the semifinal round.

The next season, BGSU finished eighth in the regular season, but downed the top seed in the first round of the tournament and advanced all the way to the championship match.

That 2003 team’s improbable run seemed hard to top, but Andy Richards’s 2004 club did just that. Again seeded eighth, the ’04 Falcons outscored opponents, 8-2, en route to three wins over higher-seeded teams and the first MAC Tournament title in school history.

The 2005 BGSU squad returned to the championship match yet again, achieving several program firsts. Richards and the Falcons won the MAC’s regular-season title for the first time in school history and earned the right to host the league tourney for the first time. The Orange and Brown did not allow a goal in three MAC Tournament matches, en route to a second-straight title and NCAA berth.

In 2007, the Falcons returned to the championship round of the conference tourney for the fourth time in five Novembers. BGSU’s three tournament matches all went to overtime, with the last two requiring penalty kicks. The Falcons dispatched regular-season champion BSU on the Cardinals’ home field in the semifinal round, before Toledo squeaked past the Orange and Brown via PKs in the final.

The 2008 Falcons finished fourth in the MAC’s regular-season standings. BGSU downed Western Michigan in quarterfinal-round action at Cochrane, before falling at UT on a late goal in the semifinals.

After a lengthy drought, the Falcons returned to the MAC Tournament in a big way in 2017. BGSU, seeded fourth, posted a home win over UB in the quarterfinal round, then went on the road and picked up a win over top-seeded Kent State. The Brown and Orange lost a heartbreaking championship match to UT in OT.

Then, in 2018, coach Matt Fannon’s club got off to a school-record 8-0 start in MAC play, laying waste to the rest of the conference with a 10-1-0 record and a regularseason crown. BGSU hosted the MAC Tournament, earning one-goal wins over Eastern Michigan and Ohio at Cochrane Stadium. The league championship match saw the Falcons outlast BSU via PKs to earn the third MAC Tournament title in program history.

The 2019 season was almost a repeat of the ‘18 campaign. Fannon and the Falcons again won the regular-season crown with a 10-1-0 MAC mark. BG again picked up home wins, this time over CMU and UB, in the league tourney, earning the right to host the final. For the second-straight November, the championship match required penalty kicks, and BGSU advanced past EMU to win the title.

In the 2020-21 academic year, the Falcons went 5-1-0 in an abbreviated conference schedule, then hosted and defeated BSU in the MAC Championship at Cochrane, winning the conference for a third consecutive season.

Then, in the fall of 2021, BGSU again captured the regular-season title, then shut out both UB (1-0) and KSU (3-0) to win the tournament at Cochrane Stadium. BGSU’s three-goal margin of victory over the Golden Flashes was the program’s largest ever in a league tourney championship match.

In 2010, the MAC women’s soccer schools had split into a pair of six-team divisions for the first time. The league did away with divisions following the 2017 season, but returned to the divisional format in the 2020-21 academic year. The fall of 2021 saw the league return to a 12-team table.

Four teams qualified for the MAC Tournament in the inaugural season of 1997, and the tourney expanded to an eight-team field from 1998 through 2019. The two divisional winners (BGSU and BSU) met in a championship match in the 2020-21 academic year, and the conference utilized a six-team tournament in the fall of 2021.