Dec. 5, 2011

=”” alt=”Facebook Logo” border=”0″ class=”imported”>Gamecock Women’s Soccer on Facebook | =”” alt=”Twitter Logo” border=”0″ class=”imported”>Follow @GamecockWSoccer on Twitter

By Miquel Jacobs
Assistant Media Relations Director

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina head coach Shelley Smith has been named the 2011 NSCAA/Mondo South Region Coach of the Year, as announced by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America. It is the second time in three years (2009 and 2011) that Smith was selected for the honor by her peers, and it is her third career Region Coach of the Year honor after also being named the Northeast Region Coach of the Year in her final season at Rhode Island in 2000.

She is now one of 10 coaches on the ballot for the NSCAA/Mondo National Coach of the Year award that will be announced at the NSCAA Award Banquet on Jan. 13, 2012, in Kansas City.

Smith, who was also named the SEC Coach of the Year, led the Gamecocks (16-7-0) to their first SEC regular season and Eastern Division titles with a program-best 9-2-0 league record. She led the Gamecocks to a program-record eight-match SEC winning streak to win the titles despite playing more road games than home games in SEC play. South Carolina played road games at the league’s No. 2 (LSU), No. 3 (Tennessee), No. 4 (Florida) and No. 5 (Georgia) seeds, showing the difficulty of the schedule that she maneuvered her team through to win the conference title.

The Gamecocks advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the fifth consecutive season where Smith guided her team past the first round for the third straight year. The record-breaking season ended with a loss to eventual national champion Stanford in a year where Smith’s Gamecocks played three of the four teams in the 2011 College Cup.