Those Panther soccer girls

Thursday (Nov. 12) update: Game time vs. Central Florida in Madison is 5 p.m. Friday.

Monday night update: The Milwaukee Panthers drew the ninth-ranked University of Central Florida in the first round of the NCAA Division 1 Women’s Soccer Tournament. The game will take place at the McClimon Soccer Complex at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Friday, Nov. 13, at a time to be announced.

On Sunday, the winner of the UWM-UCF game will face the winner of the UW-Madison-Arizona State game in Madison. The survivor among the four teams will advance to the next round. The semifinals and finals will be held Dec. 4-6 at Texas A&M University.

For more details, visit the official UWM Athletics site. For a tournament overview of the 64-team field, visit the NCAA Women’s Soccer site.

Sunday update: The Panthers handled Valparaiso easily, 4-0, in the Horizon Leauge tournament championship Sunday at UWM. Sarah Hagen scored all four goals; three came in the first 24 minutes and put the game out of reach. For the complete game story, click here. And you can watch a video of the entire game on the Horizon League Network.

Most of Wisconsin will spend Sunday in front of televisions, watching merceneries temporarily associated with Green Bay, Wis., and Tampa, Fla., butt heads.

I’d rather be in the sunshine at UWM’s Engelmann Field, to see the Panther women take on Valparaiso in the Horizon League soccer tournament championship at 1 p.m. If the Panthers win, they will have run the table in the conference, 8-0 in the regular season and 2-0 in the tourney.

That’s a remarkable feat, but there’s more to it than winning and losing. The Panthers are beautiful to watch. They are intelligent without exception; every player grasps the larger geometry. From a few rows up, you can see those triangles forming, dissolving and reforming and diagonal runs cutting through them. It’s beautiful in the way smart choreography is beautiful. When it’s working at peak, the opponents contribute to the effect by becoming trailing ornaments to the main theme.

That happened at the semifinal match Friday night. The Panthers anticipated and created, the Loyola Ramblers reacted and chased. The result: UWM 2, Loyola 0.

I credit coach Mike Moynihan for this, and not only for devising a plan and teaching it well. He also recruits the sort of young woman who is capable not only of learning the system but also of being a creative individual within it.

The Panthers are smart, but this game isn’t only about brains. These players are wonderfully athletic and very skilled. The great speed and stamina of their midfielders allows for quick, dangerous attacks sprung by heady diagonal and outside runs and timely passing. That speed also allows the Panthers to recover when they lose the ball. Many times Friday, it looked as if Loyola had good chances to score off counters. Then the midfielders would streak back and squash the threats when the Ramblers had barely crossed mid-field .

Everyone on this team traps the ball securely and turns it neatly, and several of them can launch long crosses with great accuracy. Friday, Kate Megna blistered 40-yarder to the far post, where Makenzie Gillaspie calmly gathered it in, walked around a defender and tucked it inside the near post.

The big star at UWM is Sarah Hagen, the Horizon League Player of the Year — as a sophomore. Hagen, 5’11”, is a blond beauty, but don’t let that fool you. She’s tough and she’s strong. Friday, Hagen scored her 20th goal of the season, fighting off four grabbing, poking Loyola defenders inside the box.

She can score out of a brawl like that, but mostly she picks off crosses to head the ball in or beats defenders in the open field with crafty moves or splits them and uses her breakaway speed. What a gorgeous stride this young woman has, with mechanics so pure that her sprinting appears effortless.

Friday night, desperate Loyola defenders were hanging all over Hagen, but she always maintained her poise and focus. That, too, is a hallmark of Mike Moynihan’s teams. I love the confidence of his defenders. Friday, Nicole Sperl and Erin Kreuzer, especially, calmly dribbled the ball around opponents, surveyed the field and hit open players. The Panthers almost always move the ball out of the defensive zone with a purpose and rarely just clear it.

Another pleasure of attending these games is watching the girls interact. They smile a lot on the sidelines, they support and cheer and congratulate one another. They’re like a happy band of sisters, and that is so lovely to see.

Friday, the Engelmann Field grandstand was almost full. I happened to sit among Panther parents, an easygoing lot who enjoyed the game and one another’s company. The green pitch was beautiful under the lights. It cost $5 to be a part of all this.

No beer commercials. No slutty NFL “cheerleaders.” Just wonderful, talented kids playing hard and loving it. This is what sports ought to be.