Soccer’s 1998 Big 12 Champions Recognized As Honor Team
9/21/2018 12:00:00 PM | Soccer
Still in its Infancy, Bears Shut Out #9 Nebraska, 1-0, With Freshman Keeper
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
A Baylor soccer program still in its infancy – then-head coach Randy Waldrum started it from scratch in 1995 and fielded the first team a year later – shocked the soccer world when it upset ninth-ranked Nebraska, 1-0, on Nov. 1, 1998, to clinch the Big 12 Conference title with a freshman fill-in making her first start in goal.
"I don't know how to explain it," said Courtney Saunders Leone, who scored the only goal in the game on a feed from Molly Cameron Hossack. "It was kind of like time just stopped for a second."
Twenty years later, Baylor's first Big 12 champions in any sport will be recognized as this year's honor team at the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet Friday night and on the field during Saturday's Baylor-Kansas football game at McLane Stadium.
"Looking back on it now, there were a lot of experiences in college that I didn't appreciate enough," said Lori Johnson Cota, part of the back-line defense that shut out the Huskers that day. "Now that I can go back and actually see it set in stone makes it more real."
Nikki Hales Pipes, a junior center midfielder on that 1998 team that finished 15-5-1 overall and made the program's first NCAA Tournament appearance, said it's amazing to think that the program had only been in existence for three years.
"We went into that season and knocked off A&M and tied Texas and then turned around and beat Nebraska – and, to top it off, without (goalkeeper Dawn Greathouse) and with a freshman goalkeeper. You look back on it now and go, 'Wow! We really did something there.'''
That group of young overachievers set the stage for a Baylor Athletics program that has won 73 more Big 12 championships since then and national championships in women's basketball, men's tennis and acrobatics & tumbling.
"That's just really cool to be a part of a legacy of beginning championships for Baylor," Cota said.
The building of that championship team began when Baylor officially added women's soccer as an intercollegiate sport in 1995 and hired Waldrum from the University of Tulsa, where he coached both the men's and women's teams.
In an interview with the Waco Tribune-Herald, Waldrum said signing Nikki Hales Pipes "was like signing a blue-chip football recruit." She was part of the first signing class that also included Leone and Hossack, who were inducted into the Baylor Hall of Fame in 2012 and 2015, respectively.
"When we won the Big 12 championship, I was as happy for (Hales Pipes) as anyone, because she was the first," Waldrum said.
Twenty years later, Saunders Leone (69), Cameron Hossack (67) and Hales Pipes (35) still rank as the top three goal scorers in program history.
"There was just something so different about that group," Hossack said. "I think the fact that we all came in at the same time – there was no seniority established, we were all freshmen – it was just a level playing field from the beginning."
As freshmen in that inaugural 1996 season, that group didn't lose in its first 11 games and finished a phenomenal 17-3-1, taking third place in the Big 12.
"Looking back, we were extremely naïve," Saunders Leone said. "Our second year, we played Oklahoma . . . and we had a ridiculous number of shots on goal to their one shot on goal and lost, 1-0. I remember Randy told us at the end of that year that if we had won that game, we would have won the regular-season title. It hits me how important that kind of stuff was. But, at that point, you're like, 'OK, we'll try again next year.'''
The '98 team took its lumps early in the season, going 0-fer on a California swing and getting blown out by top-ranked North Carolina, 5-0. But, the Bears also beat 13th-ranked SMU, 3-1, and won 4-0 on the road at Duke.
Baylor lost All-American goalkeeper Dawn Greathouse to a knee injury 14 minutes into the second half of a 3-0 win over Iowa State, seemingly derailing its chances of a Big 12 title. Hales Pipes, who had already played every other position on the field, put on goalkeeper gloves and finished out the last 31 minutes of the game against the Cyclones.
"I think I only had to catch like two balls," she said. "The defense did their job and took care of me."
Two days later, Waldrum turned to freshman goalkeeper Megan Jones, who had seen only a handful of minutes in the first 18 games of the season. Jones had nine saves in preserving the title-clinching shutout.
"It was like there were three goalkeepers in that net," Hossack said. "It was the strangest thing. Saves that I had never seen that goalkeeper make, she was making that day. It was like the stars were just all aligned that day."
Now, all the stars will be back together again for one more victory lap.
"At the end of the day, it's a team thing," said Dawn Greathouse Siergiej, a 2011 Baylor Hall of Fame inductee who won two national championships as an assistant coach under Waldrum at Notre Dame. "Megan actually played a great game in goal that day. And the rest of the team rallied around her and did fantastic as well."
Baylor Bear Insider
A Baylor soccer program still in its infancy – then-head coach Randy Waldrum started it from scratch in 1995 and fielded the first team a year later – shocked the soccer world when it upset ninth-ranked Nebraska, 1-0, on Nov. 1, 1998, to clinch the Big 12 Conference title with a freshman fill-in making her first start in goal.
"I don't know how to explain it," said Courtney Saunders Leone, who scored the only goal in the game on a feed from Molly Cameron Hossack. "It was kind of like time just stopped for a second."
Twenty years later, Baylor's first Big 12 champions in any sport will be recognized as this year's honor team at the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet Friday night and on the field during Saturday's Baylor-Kansas football game at McLane Stadium.
"Looking back on it now, there were a lot of experiences in college that I didn't appreciate enough," said Lori Johnson Cota, part of the back-line defense that shut out the Huskers that day. "Now that I can go back and actually see it set in stone makes it more real."
Nikki Hales Pipes, a junior center midfielder on that 1998 team that finished 15-5-1 overall and made the program's first NCAA Tournament appearance, said it's amazing to think that the program had only been in existence for three years.
"We went into that season and knocked off A&M and tied Texas and then turned around and beat Nebraska – and, to top it off, without (goalkeeper Dawn Greathouse) and with a freshman goalkeeper. You look back on it now and go, 'Wow! We really did something there.'''
That group of young overachievers set the stage for a Baylor Athletics program that has won 73 more Big 12 championships since then and national championships in women's basketball, men's tennis and acrobatics & tumbling.
"That's just really cool to be a part of a legacy of beginning championships for Baylor," Cota said.
The building of that championship team began when Baylor officially added women's soccer as an intercollegiate sport in 1995 and hired Waldrum from the University of Tulsa, where he coached both the men's and women's teams.
In an interview with the Waco Tribune-Herald, Waldrum said signing Nikki Hales Pipes "was like signing a blue-chip football recruit." She was part of the first signing class that also included Leone and Hossack, who were inducted into the Baylor Hall of Fame in 2012 and 2015, respectively.
"When we won the Big 12 championship, I was as happy for (Hales Pipes) as anyone, because she was the first," Waldrum said.
Twenty years later, Saunders Leone (69), Cameron Hossack (67) and Hales Pipes (35) still rank as the top three goal scorers in program history.
"There was just something so different about that group," Hossack said. "I think the fact that we all came in at the same time – there was no seniority established, we were all freshmen – it was just a level playing field from the beginning."
As freshmen in that inaugural 1996 season, that group didn't lose in its first 11 games and finished a phenomenal 17-3-1, taking third place in the Big 12.
"Looking back, we were extremely naïve," Saunders Leone said. "Our second year, we played Oklahoma . . . and we had a ridiculous number of shots on goal to their one shot on goal and lost, 1-0. I remember Randy told us at the end of that year that if we had won that game, we would have won the regular-season title. It hits me how important that kind of stuff was. But, at that point, you're like, 'OK, we'll try again next year.'''
The '98 team took its lumps early in the season, going 0-fer on a California swing and getting blown out by top-ranked North Carolina, 5-0. But, the Bears also beat 13th-ranked SMU, 3-1, and won 4-0 on the road at Duke.
Baylor lost All-American goalkeeper Dawn Greathouse to a knee injury 14 minutes into the second half of a 3-0 win over Iowa State, seemingly derailing its chances of a Big 12 title. Hales Pipes, who had already played every other position on the field, put on goalkeeper gloves and finished out the last 31 minutes of the game against the Cyclones.
"I think I only had to catch like two balls," she said. "The defense did their job and took care of me."
Two days later, Waldrum turned to freshman goalkeeper Megan Jones, who had seen only a handful of minutes in the first 18 games of the season. Jones had nine saves in preserving the title-clinching shutout.
"It was like there were three goalkeepers in that net," Hossack said. "It was the strangest thing. Saves that I had never seen that goalkeeper make, she was making that day. It was like the stars were just all aligned that day."
Now, all the stars will be back together again for one more victory lap.
"At the end of the day, it's a team thing," said Dawn Greathouse Siergiej, a 2011 Baylor Hall of Fame inductee who won two national championships as an assistant coach under Waldrum at Notre Dame. "Megan actually played a great game in goal that day. And the rest of the team rallied around her and did fantastic as well."
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