Thirty-one years. That’s the number of years in a row Penn State’s women’s soccer has made the NCAA Tournament.

Despite an up-and-down regular season, the Nittany Lions will host their 14th opening-round match in the past 15 seasons. Penn State will host Army at 5 p.m. on Saturday, November 15, at Jeffrey Field.

It wasn’t a typical regular season for the Nittany Lions by their standards. They didn’t win 10 or more games in the regular season for the first time in program history—winning only nine.

Penn State opened the season as the No. 11 team in the country but finished unranked, beating only one ranked opponent this fall. Despite the lackluster resume, Erica Dambach’s team earned a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the lowest seeding for the program since 2016.

Penn State will have to get by a tough first-round opponent in Army if it wants to advance in the NCAA Tournament. The Black Knights won 14 games in the regular season, including the Patriot League title.

This Saturday will be two weeks since the blue and white last played after losing to UCLA in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals. Despite the long layover, Dambach feels the rest her team has had since the loss has helped her team ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

“We have, in my opinion, completely used it as an advantage to get to recharge the batteries and compete,” Dambach said. “To give players who haven’t had as much playing time an opportunity to play some 11 aside and to work their way into training time. It’s been a huge advantage for us.”

Consistency perfectly describes Dambach’s successful record in the NCAA Tournament for the Nittany Lions during her storied career. Since she became the head coach in 2007, they have reached the Sweet 16 or further in 13 of their past 18 tournament appearances, including winning their only national championship in 2015. The last time the Nittany Lions failed to make it past the second round was in 2016.

The Nittany Lions are 24-3 in first-round matches in the NCAA Tournament and have never lost a first-round match at home during Dambach’s tenure. The only year her team has lost in the first round was in 2008, when on the road at Rutgers.

Ahead of the first-round match against Army, Dambach talked about why her teams have been able to have so much success in the NCAA Tournament.

“Throughout the course of the season, we put a real emphasis on taking a little bit from each opponent and putting it into what we’re doing. Win or lose results aside, making sure that we have a full game review after every game, so that we can grow from each game, whether we win or lose,” Dambach said. “We’re consistent with the way that we break down our previous game and grow from it, with the idea being that once it’s NCAA Tournament time, we’ve got our tool chest that we can use to go after any opponent. We feel confident that regardless of what our opponent throws at us that [the team] can solve problems on the field.”

As the No. 8 seed in the Charlottesville regional, Penn State will have a tough path toward making it past the second round for the ninth consecutive year. If the Nittany Lions can get past Army on Saturday, a potential rematch against No. 1-seeded Virginia may await them.

The road toward winning a second national championship will be a tough one, as one of the four eight-seeds in the tournament. A No. 8 seed has never won the NCAA Tournament in women’s soccer history. However, after all the challenges and adversity the team went through this season, Dambach does not doubt that her team can make a run in the NCAA Tournament once again.

“100%. We’re dangerous, good, have quality all over the field, player availability, and depth. I look at the important qualities that a team needs this time of year to make a run, and we’ve got all those qualities,” Dambach said. “Of course, we were going to have an up-and-down [season]. Now, it’s a matter of can we put all of it aside, use it to our advantage, to then fuel us to move forward here.”