The College of Staten Island recently completed what was their final turn through the City University of New York Athletic Conference in 2019-20, and will be fully integrated into the East Coast Conference with an NCAA Division II schedule in 2020-21.  Leaving behind a tremendous wake as one of the CUNYAC's founding members, day-by-day we will be looking back at each of CSI's programs, notably the CUNYAC Championship teams spanning over 40 years in our spring CUNYAC retrospective entitled, "Remember the Legacy."  This historical look back will chronicle the amazing achievements of CSI athletics programs, complete with championships, milestones, and amazing performances.

Our first sport spotlighted will be Women's Soccer, one of CSI's newer programs but already one of its most storied.  The team has collected a total of 10 CUNYAC Championships as a founding member of the conference's sport offering, and leaves the CUNYAC as its most successful program by far.

THE START
The College of Staten Island became a Division III member institution in the fall of 1977, and was a founding member of the CUNY Athletic Conference.  It took the conference a while, however, to add Women's Soccer as a sponsored championship sport.  It happened in 2004, the same year the Dolphins began sponsoring the sport on their campus.  The idea to start the sport at the college happened a couple of years prior, inline with facility renovations that planned to move the CSI Soccer Complex from where the track sits now, to a lower-leveled field that would come with FieldTurf synthetic grass, specific to soccer.  The Dolphins started a student-interest club, with the hopes of debuting in 2004, and were pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming interest that followed.  John Guagliardo was hired as the program's first Head Coach and just weeks after a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the field took place, CSI Women's Soccer made its debut with two other CUNYAC programs.

THE FIRSTS...

First Game:  September 11, 2004 vs. Mills College (Calif.) - the Cyclones defeated the Dolphins, 3-1.
First CUNYAC Game:  October 9, 2004, at CCNY - The Dolphins defeated the Beavers, 1-0. It was also CSI's first road victory.
First Win:  October 2, 2004 - CSI defeated Mitchell College, 2-1.  It was also the first win on their home field.
First Coach: John Guagliardo, who led the team until the close of the 2014 season.

INSTANT SUCCESS
There was hardly a ramp-up period to CSI's CUNYAC excellence in the sport of Women's Soccer.  Granted, at the start of that first season, only three CUNY schools supported the sport, City College of New York and Medgar Evers College were the others.  In fact, the CUNYAC called their first-ever Championship in 2004 an Exhibition, until a fourth school, John Jay College, entered the fold in 2005.  To give CSI more added conference competition, they were also a part of the Hudson Valley Women's Athletic Conference, together with the Cougars and Beavers, and later, the Bloodhounds.  It wasn't until the CUNYAC had an established seven teams within the conference were they able to secure an automatic bid into the NCAA Postseason, so many CUNYAC Championships did not carry that promise until almost a decade later.  

THE CHAMPIONSHIP WITH AN ASTERISK
The CUNYAC did not officially acknowledge it's Championship game of 2004 as an official one, calling it an Exhibition because only three teams comprised the conference back then.  Still, for the schools involved, it was most certainly worthy of a Final with bragging rights at the forefront in the CUNYAC's inaugural year.  CSI started their debut year in an 0-4 hole, but after the Dolphins defeated Mitchell College for their first win ever, they went on a three-game tear, including a gritty, 1-0, win at Randall's Island in their CUNYAC debut against CCNY.  The two teams met again exactly one week later at CSI, where the Dolphins were able to win more handedly, 3-0.  The two games would prove to be a CUNYAC Championship preview, one where the Dolphins were seemingly favored.  While many expected a defensive battle, it was hardly that way at Randall's Island.  Instead, CSI was able to outlast CCNY, 4-3, to take the crown, setting the stage for their incredible run moving forward.  CSI finished 9-6 that inaugural season, led by Shannon Connelly and Daniela Otaiza, who scored 22 of CSI's 40 goals that season.

A ONE-SIDED AFFAIR - 2005-2008
Over the next four seasons, it became clear that CSI had staying power.  The team that went 4-0 in the CUNYAC their inaugural season did not lose a conference game until midway through the 2008 campaign, ultimately going 19-0-1 during the regular season over that stretch, and rather expectedly, those results carried through the postseason.  In 2005, CSI rode the leg of Rookie of the Year and future Hall of Famer Fiosa Begai and Tournament MVP Lauren Baydal, to score a 3-2 win over Medgar Evers in the Championship, and following another undefeated run in 2006, they followed up with a three-peat, turning back the Cougars again, this time more convincingly, 4-0.  In 2007, CSI squeaked by CCNY, 1-0, in the CUNYAC title game, and then followed with another 1-0 win over the College of Mount Saint Vincent to earn the HVWAC Championship as well.  For the first time in the school's history, the wins merited them a trip to the ECAC Metro NY/NJ Division III Tournament.  Graduating a healthy contingent of players from there, CSI was just over the .500 mark in 2008, but it was enough to pull off a narrow, 1-0, clincher over Medgar Evers in the CUNYAC Final, CSI's fifth-straight Championship.  Lauren Neglia scored the game's only goal on a feed from Tournament MVP Kelly Kenny.
THE REBUILD - 2009-10
CSI's first five seasons were unprecedented and certainly not typical to the cyclical nature of athletics programs.  And so 2009 was a rebuilding year that is necessary at most programs but what has been a veritable anomaly at CSI.  The Dolphins muddled through a 3-11-2 campaign in 2009, lacking the big firepower and not qualifying the postseason.  Thus, the 2010 season followed and needing a scoring lift, they got it by way of freshman Demi-Jean Martorano, a future CSI Athletics Hall of Famer.  The dynamo scored 16 goals in her initial season, immediately placing CSI back on the map.  CSI won 11 games, but were stifled in the Final for the first time, losing the since-vacated title to Medgar Evers, 3-1.

THE PK WIN - 2011

Two years removed from a title, the Dolphins entered 2011 with resolved focus to get back on top.  If Martorano's freshman year wasn't enough, CSI scored another pair of recruits in Melissa Gelardi and Samantha Wysokowski who immediately became two stars on the pitch.  The result was a then program-record 13 wins, a perfect 9-0 home record, and a 6-0 blasting of York College in the CUNYAC Semifinals.  The Championship, however, would not come as easy.  Despite beating John Jay, 4-0, and 5-0, during the regular season, CSI was stalemated to a 0-0 draw in the title game.  That's when Wysokowski, normally a striker who was playing keeper for the first time in her career in 2011, had to toe the line as part of penalty kicks, the first CUNYAC Women's Soccer Tournament game decided this way.  Wysokowski blasted in a goal herself, and then made not one, but two saves, the final one giving CSI the win.  Wysokowski would play keeper a handful of times the rest of her career, but the goal-scoring machine was known more for putting balls into the net than keeping them out, scoring 71 goals in essentially, three years as a striker.  As a freshman, she was Tournament MVP.

VICTIMS OF THE UPSET - 2012-2014
As exhilarating as winning the CUNYAC Championship in 2011 was for the Dolphins, it would prove to be their last for a series of years, and the only word to describe the stretch was frustrating.  In 2012, following a perfect 6-0 record in the CUNYAC and a Player of the Year citation for Martorano, CSI was stymied by CCNY, 1-0, in the CUNYAC Championship.  One year later, the Dolphins had their best season in school history, powering for a 16-3-2 record, but finished just 2-3 down the stretch, a mark that included a disappointing 3-1 loss in the CUNYAC Final against Brooklyn.  In 2014, after yet another undefeated CUNYAC Regular Season, the Dolphins again were the ousted top seed against Brooklyn, 1-0.  CSI started to carry the stigma of not being able to win the big one, and days later, they lost a ECAC Quarterfinal game as the No. 3 seed in the eight-team tournament to The Sage Colleges, 3-2.

BACK TO DOMINANCE - 2015-2019
CSI made a coaching change after the 2014 season, saying goodbye to Guagliardo after 11 seasons and an outstanding 116-76-9 record.  In time for the 2015 season, Giuseppe Pennetti assumed the controls and with it, a new wave of out-of-region recruits to coincide with the Dolphin Cove residence halls occupied campus.  CSI's new wave of talent didn't necessarily hit the ground running, going just 4-1-1 in conference play in the regular season, and not going into the postseason as the normal favorite.  But this time around, it was CSI that scored an upset come tournament time.  First, they avenged their previous losses to Brooklyn with a 1-0 Semifinal win on the road, and three days later, CSI scored a 2-1, overtime, golden-goal, win over top-seeded Lehman College.  The winning goal was scored by redshirt senior Wysokowski, who bookended her career in one of the most memorable ways possible.  What's more is that it marked CSI's first-ever entry into the NCAA Division III National Championship Tournament as an automatic qualifier.

CSI's reclamation of the title in 2015 rejuvenated the program, and even after entering the 2016 Tournament as the No. 2 seed underdog again, the Dolphins made rather short work of both Lehman and Brooklyn again, giving senior Kaitlin Russo the MVP nods.

Pennetti's final season as skipper came in 2017, and this time CSI emerged as the class of the conference from start to finish, posting 13 total wins en route to a shutout win over Lehman in the Final, and a third-straight trip to the NCAA National Championship Tournament. a 4-1 loss to Johns Hopkins in what was arguably the most contested of the NCAA Championship contests CSI had appeared in to that point.

Following the 2017 season, the head coaching position at CSI developed into a full-time position, and Pennetti departed the program and for the past two seasons, Brittany Casares took over the reigns.  The results have been two more undefeated CUNYAC campaigns.  Lauren Smith's only multi-goal game of her career turned into a hat trick and a 6-2 drubbing of John Jay in the 2018 Championship, and although CSI could not participate in the 2019 postseason, their undefeated CUNYAC run through the regular season again was proof-positive that the Dolphins were leaving the CUNYAC the same way it came in - at the very top of the conference.

REMEMBER THE LEGACY
First Season:  2004 
All-Time Record: 176-106-15 (.589)
All-Time CUNYAC Record: 63-6-6 (.840)
CUNYAC Postseason Championships: 10 - 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
NCAA Division III Postseason Tournament Appearances: 4 - 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018​
Hall of Famers:  Fiosa Begai (2012), Demi-Jean Martorano (2018)


Note: Guagliardo, PK Win, and Smith photos courtesy of Denis Gostev.  Cover Photo from left to right: Fiosa Begai, Demi-Jean Martorano, and Rebecca D'Aloia.