With an 87-3-7 record during their four years at Grand Valley State University and just one loss in the last two seasons, the GVSU women’s soccer team said goodbye to another wildly successful senior class.

Jaleen Dingledine, Kylee Merino, Erika Pitroff, Kristen Eible and Jenna Wenglinski finished off their GVSU careers with back-to-back National Championships Saturday, and the five will graduate with the best record of any senior class in GVSU women’s soccer history.

“Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for anything more,” said Eible, a midfielder and starter since 2007. “It has been an incredible four years, and since we were freshmen, every class above us was the most successful class for Grand Valley soccer. This year, it was our turn, and hopefully for the younger girls, they’ll continue to keep wining, and they’ll become the most successful class.”

With four GLIAC championships in their four years at GVSU, the five seniors helped extend the Laker conference championship streak to six.

“It shows how focused we were throughout the season and how hard we worked game by game,” Eible said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a GLIAC game or out of conference or if we’re playing for a national championship, we try and come out and play our best every single game.”

Likely the highlight of the senior class’ tenure at GVSU was this year’s NCAA tournament when the Lakers shut out each opponent and scored a NCAA record 17 tournament goals in 5 games.

“We were so proud. It was unbelievable that we were able to hold opponents to zero goals, and the girls up top were able to score so many,” said defender Jenna Wenglinski. “We worked really hard for it all year, and it was a prefect way to go out.”

The seniors lost just one conference game — a 1-0 overtime loss to Northern Michigan University on Sept. 19. After that loss, the team gave up only two goals and went 17-0-1.

“The loss to Northern this season really tuned this team into who we became,” Eible said. “It made us come together and figure a lot of stuff out and who we are as a group and reevaluate ourselves as players and teammates. We definitely came out stronger as teammates after that.”

The good news for the Lakers is the team will return plenty of talent, including goalkeeper Chelsea Parise, who tied an NCAA record this year with 17 shutouts, and leading scorer Kayla Addison.

However, GVSU head coach Dave DiIanni said he knows the senior leaders will be tough to replace.

“Jenna Wenglinski came in as a walk-on and has been a mainstay on the back line in the last three years,” he said. “Kylee Merino is arguably our best defender, Erika Pitroff was probably playing her best soccer as this tournament continued. Kristen Eible has a lot of heart and is going to be very missed, and Jaleen Dingledine, you could argue, has had the best last two years with our program. They’re all going to be missed as both soccer players and people within our program.”

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