HOUSTON — When Stanford goalkeeper Andrew Epstein started to lift himself off the ground after his game-winning save in penalty kicks on Sunday, all he saw were his teammates racing towards him.
At first, he wasn’t sure it was over.
Once his teammates made it 20 yards down the field in celebration, Epstein knew they had beaten Wake Forest and were back-to-back national champions.
“At that point you’re just so happy,” said Epstein, who had four saves in regulation and two more in the shootout. “It’s your favorite friends walking up the field towards you. It’s a pretty special sight and I’m lucky to have seen that two years in a row with my teammates flying on me. That’s a great feeling.”
Epstein made a pair of diving stops and Corey Baird and Sam Werner scored Stanford’s final shootout goals to give the Cardinal their second straight College Cup title, 5-4 over Wake Forest after the teams played 110 scoreless minutes.
Mountain View High grad Foster Langsdorf had two shots in the match in 100 minutes played, and made his penalty kick in the shootout.
Langsdorf is the Stanford goal leader who scored in the team’s first three tournament games and had 15 on the season.
Stanford didn’t allow a goal in the tournament, becoming the first team since Wisconsin in 1995 to accomplish the feat and win the national championship.
The game was the sixth national championship to go to penalty kicks, and the first since Virginia beat UCLA in 2014.
Stanford finished 15-3-5 after beginning the season 0-3-1.
“Going into winter something felt a little missing, like we had to take that time to encourage and develop every single one of our players into something like those guys were last year,” junior Drew Skundrich said. “Over time we did that. We did very well in spring, everyone trained well over summer and we got after it right away in preseason.
“Dropping those first few games just made us realize this is a new year, a new team, new challenges and we need to take everything we can to get back to this stage and that’s what we did,” he said.
Wake Forest finished 19-3-3. Stanford beat Wake Forest 2-1 in overtime in the quarterfinals last season on the way to its first national title.
“We had the opportunity to win the game today in penalties,” Wake Forest coach Bobby Muuss said. “I felt comfortable and confident with the group of guys that were stepping out there but it just wasn’t our day unfortunately.”
