Women’s Soccer: Seniors prepare for final game as Panthers

Pitt women’s soccer players Katie Ruhe and Kristina Rioux have roomed together since arriving… Pitt women’s soccer players Katie Ruhe and Kristina Rioux have roomed together since arriving on campus. As freshmen, they had nine other teammates in their class. Now — four years later — they are the only two that remain.

“We came in with nine [players], and then we added two transfers,” Rioux said. “Then everybody either quit or transferred, and now it’s just me and Katie … It’s weird to think that we’re the only two who stuck it out and didn’t quit.”

On Friday, the two roommates will take the field as teammates one final time. Ruhe will graduate and move on from Pitt, whereas Rioux will play one more season. She has one year of eligibility remaining because she sat out all of last season with an injury.

Pitt (2-12-4, 1-7-2) plays nationally ranked West Virginia (13-4, 9-1) at 7 p.m. Friday, and the match will be the Panthers’ last game of the season. The seniors — including fifth-year player Katheryn Kunugi — will be honored beforehand on Ambrose Urbanic Field.

Ruhe graduates in the spring and said she plans to attend graduate school somewhere in the South, but she hasn’t decided where. For her, Friday’s senior night is a chance to reflect on a career during which she became the program’s all-time assists leader and played a leading role in the school’s first-ever winning season in 2009.

Ruhe said that a victory over West Virginia on Friday would “make [her] career.”

“This season’s been so awful that if we beat West Virginia on senior night — my last game — that’s what I would look back on and think about,” she said.

Rioux will return in goal for the Panthers next season. Nevertheless, she said that she is focused on beating West Virginia, adding that a win against Pitt’s biggest rival on Friday night would be the send-off that her fellow seniors deserve.

“It’s a difficult season when you only get two wins,” Rioux said. “But beating West Virginia on Friday would really kind of turn this entire season around and send our seniors off on a positive note.”

Rioux said that she intends to assume the role of team leader when Ruhe and Kunugi leave. She credited the two on their leadership and motivational skills.

“They were able to bring the team together on numerous occasions,” Rioux said. “Whether it’s practice or games, they were always able to pick everyone’s spirits up and bring the intensity up. That’s definitely something I’m going to miss. They made me play better because of their leadership and intensity that they brought to everything that they did.”

Despite the team’s woes, head coach Sue-Moy Chin said that the senior class showed character by never throwing in the towel — regardless of how many losses they suffered.

“They’ve shown the younger players, especially the juniors, how to be strong leaders in the face of adversity,” Chin said. “They never gave up; they continued to push and fight, just trying to show the younger players what it takes to compete at this level.”

Pitt will take on the role of potential spoiler Friday night, as they face a West Virginia team that is battling Marquette for the No. 1 seed in the Big East tournament.

The Panthers are also hoping to avenge last season’s loss to the Mountaineers. The two teams were locked in a scoreless tie until, with 43 minutes remaining, the game was postponed due to lightning.

When the action resumed 11 days later, Pitt was without Liz Carroll — its starting midfielder — who suffered a concussion prior to the match. The Mountaineers shut out the Panthers 3-0 and managed double the amount of shots.

Ruhe said that she is approaching Friday’s game — the last that she will ever play as a Panther — differently from last year.

“I want to go into it and just have fun,” she said. “I don’t ever want to not be smiling and laughing; I just want everything to be fun.”