10:30 a.m.
For Cabrini women’s soccer players Ashley Tutzauer and Brianna Blair, Saturday, Nov. 16 started like any other game day would. Even though the stakes were slightly greater than usual, it was nothing too out of the ordinary for the two junior early childhood education and special education majors.
They were in Springfield, Massachusetts, getting ready to take on the host Springfield Pride in the first round of the 2019 Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III women’s soccer tournament. However, when the team left the hotel and headed for the field that morning, Tutzauer and Blair each had an extra bag with them that nobody else on the team did.
“I was just planning on being there for the whole weekend for soccer,” Blair, a defender who was named the Most Valuable Player of the Atlantic East Conference Tournament the weekend prior, said.
Both players started that morning’s game against Springfield. Blair played 65 minutes of the game, putting a shot on goal that was saved. Tutzauer, the Cavaliers’ goalkeeper, played all 90 minutes of the match, allowing a single goal but stopping seven shots on the day.
While the two played well, it wasn’t enough, as Springfield’s fourth-minute goal would be the only score of the game and the Cavs lost 1-0. The season was over.
The pair didn’t have time to mourn the loss, though. They hustled to the locker room, changed out, grabbed their extra bags and headed for the parking lot.
They had a basketball game to get to.
Around 1 p.m.
“Ashley said something about ‘see you Saturday if we don’t win’ and I figured maybe we’ll see [Tutzauer and Blair] Sunday,” Kate Pearson, Cabrini women’s basketball head coach, said. “That afternoon I got a text that her dad was driving them down to the game so we knew around 1. We thought, ‘Oh okay, we’ll see if they get here and we’ll go from there.'”
The basketball team was scheduled to play the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg in Galloway, New Jersey, which presented a problem since the two were 250 miles away in Massachusetts.
“Right after the game ended, we just switched gears right away,” Blair, a forward on the hardwood, said. “At that point, I just felt like kind of defeated, because I got a black eye during the soccer game, so the whole car ride, basically, I was icing like on and off; we napped a lot.”
They had a four-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of them and the game was scheduled for 7 p.m., so they knew it was going to be tight. Luckily, the afternoon’s games were running behind.
“It was a tournament at Stockton, so some of the games were running late,” Tutzauer, a guard, said. “We got there at 6:30 and our game was supposed to be at 7 but it got pushed back until like 8-ish so we made it just in time.”
Fueled by adrenaline, and the sandwiches Tutzauer’s father had just in case, they suited up and got ready to go again.
Around 8 p.m.
When the game against the Bobcats tipped off, Pearson wasn’t planning on playing either of them very much.
“We kind of talked about using [Tutzauer] as a possibility,” Pearson said. “We talked to her before the Eastern game as, you know, staying ready in case we needed her because we knew she’d be an important part of our team this year.”
However, as the game started, the Cavs came out a bit slow and fell down early on.
“We were struggling a bit offensively so we threw her in, and she responded,” Pearson said.
Tutzauer almost immediately provided a spark off the bench. Closing the first quarter down 13-8, the Cavaliers started the second with an 18-4 run to take the lead, capped off by a Tutzauer three-pointer that made it a 26-17 game.
Early in the second half, Greensburg cut the lead to five before fellow junior Lexi Edwards hit a three, followed by another three from Tutzauer to push the lead back to nine to close the quarter out.
In the fourth, something clicked. Tutzauer came out firing, knocking down a pair of threes in the first few minutes, followed by a steal that led to another three at the other end with just over five minutes to play. After a short rest, she came back in and hit another three with a minute and a half left, followed by a pair of free throws in the final 45 seconds to put the game on ice.
All told, she would pace the Cavaliers on the night with 20 points on six of seven shooting from beyond the arc, the latter of which tied a career-high. She also added a steal, a blocked shot, an assist and three rebounds, all in just 15 minutes of play as Cabrini grabbed the win 61-53.
Not bad for someone who ate dinner in the locker room before the game.
“I wasn’t really expecting to play, because I’ve only been to a few practices, but I think my teammates agreed that if it would help us win I should play,” Tutzauer said. “It was really exciting just coming off the soccer field and seeing everybody so excited for me; it made me like happy to be back.”
“I had never seen anything like it,” Pearson said. “I wasn’t completely surprised, only because I think she was playing off that adrenaline and a lot of times with basketball, one of the first times you step on the court when you haven’t played in a while you just play. You don’t think about it.”
Significance
Accomplishments like this don’t happen very often. If it has ever happened at Cabrini, it was so long ago that there is no record of it online.
In the professional ranks, Pro Football Hall of Fame member Deion Sanders famously dressed for the NFL and MLB on the same day in 1992. On Oct. 11, he played for the Atlanta Falcons against the Dolphins in Miami and helped them to a 21-17 win. He then jumped on a plane and flew to Pittsburgh, where he was active for the Atlanta Braves in game two of the National League Championship Series against the Pirates. He did not, however, play in the nightcap.
Tutzauer not only played in hers but turned in a career performance.
“I think it was also the idea that she was in Massachusetts for the [soccer] game, drove four-five hours to then get to New Jersey, to then play,” Pearson said of the accomplishment.
Regardless of playing, simply having the two present and in uniform for the basketball game provided a spark for the team.
“When we showed up, they were really excited because we hadn’t really been a full team yet,” she said. “They were upset for us that our season ended [for soccer], but they were just excited that we were there.”
“Bri and Ashley are both hard working athletes who bring a lot of energy and a lot of positivity to the team,” Pearson said. “They were excited and it kind of made our team complete having them on the sideline with us and in warm ups and in the game.”
Despite sitting for the second game, the significance of her teammate’s accomplishment was not lost on Blair, who was quick to rain praise on her friend and teammate.
“It was just really impressive that, like, Ashley played a game that morning and then we showed up at Stockton and she showed up on the court and dropped 20 points,” Blair said. “It was crazy.”
“I didn’t feel the soreness until the day after, on Sunday,” Tutzauer said. “I woke up, and with the basketball and the soccer game combined, I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I was so sore.”
