UNIVERSITY PARK - The end of the regular season did not go according to plan for Christie Welsh and her fellow senior teammates.

The Penn State women's soccer team was supposed to play West Virginia on Jeffrey Field on Oct. 29, but thanks to a few inches heavy, wet snow, the Mountaineers decided not to make the trip to Happy Valley.

Then, the Nittany Lions followed with a first-round loss to Illinois in the Big Ten Tournament, ending their three-year reign as conference champions.

That loss may have played a role in Penn State being put on the road for the first round of the NCAA Championships.

But thanks to Virginia upsetting those very same Mountaineers, the fifth seed, in the second round, the Nittany Lions do get one last game on their home turf. It comes at 1 p.m. today against the Cavaliers in the third round of the NCAA Championships.

"I'm really, really happy to play at home again at least one last time," senior Christie Welsh said. "I just remember feeling, 'Oh, I played my last game on Jeffrey and I didn't even know it at the time.'"

The Lions also used that loss to the Illini as motivation for this tournament, beating Princeton and Maryland, to make it to the sweet 16 for the fifth straight season.

"That game right there just showed us how that could be the end of our season," Welsh said. "We took a step back and re-evaluated our season. We didn't want that to be our last game."

Welsh is also one of three seniors who has some extra motivation -- to return to the College Cup. The school's all-time leading scorer made a trip as a freshman, when the Lions lost to North Carolina in the semifinals, and has been reminding her teammates that she wants to go back.

"A bunch of us ... have talked extensively about our final four experience to people to try to get it through to them what it could be like," Welsh said. "You're talking about how you're tired at the end of the season, your fitness and all that stuff. If you get that far, it doesn't matter. You thrive off that crowd, you thrive off the environment. It's an experience you want people to have."

On a team with a freshman goaltender and a handful of other freshmen and sophomores in key areas, head coach Paula Wilkins is banking on the wise words of Welsh.

"That leadership, when you get down to crunch time, will put you over the top," Wilkins said. "It's on their shoulders to see what they can create and what they can do. ... Once you get a taste of it you want to get back."

Welsh, by her amazing standards, has had an off year. She has 82 career goals but only 13 this season, which still leads the team. She has been suffering from plantar fasciatis, an injury to the ligaments in her foot, since the summer.

She said the soft ground at this time of year, thanks to all that rain, has made things less painful and once the season is over she plans on putting her feet up for a while. But for now, she is just trying to forget about it.

"It won't factor into my head," Welsh said. "If it's there, it's there. I'm just going to take some Advil, or whatever, before a game and just do it. It's one game each weekend to get all the way to the end. Just have to put it all on the line. It's the pressure of my last, potentially my last game."

Today's game will have an added obstacle. Thanks to a wet fall and the Big Ten men's tournament taking place at Jeffrey Field last weekend, conditions will not be optimal. Throw in temperatures in the 30s and the possibility of snow, and soccer will be challengng this afternoon.

"Anywhere you're going to go right now on the east coast is going to be sort of chewed up because of the rain," Wilkins said. "The last two performances that we've had in that type of weather have been good. I'm not too concerned about the field."