IRVINE—Concordia may not have won the Pacific West Conference regular season title in 2025, but they left no stone unturned in rolling to the conference tournament trophy this week at their own Golden Eagle Stadium.

CUI went 3-0 in the championships, including a 12-5 win over Azusa Pacific on Friday afternoon to earn the PacWest’s automatic berth into next week’s NCAA West Region tournament. In their three contests, the Golden Eagles outscored their opponents, 25-11.

Today, Jessica Im had three doubles and scored three times and Jayden Nishi pitched four nearly perfect relief innings to lead the home team to the win. Nishi entered the contest in the top of the fourth with a 6-5 lead, didn’t allow a run and only gave up two hits.

There have been three PacWest tournaments and Concordia has won all three of them. In all three finals, their opponent was Azusa Pacific, who this time had to win two loser-out games on Thursday to advance to the final.

Today, the Cougars came out swinging, taking a 2-0 lead on Julia Dorn’s fourth home run of the tournament. APU sent seven batters to the plate, but Concordia starter Kacie Gossett was able to get out the jam and limit the damage to two runs.

Her teammates rewarded her in the bottom half of the inning. The Golden Eagles sent nine players to the batter's box, with four of them crossing the plate. Im led off with a double and came home on Audrey Robles hit. Shelby Pfeiler added an RBI-base hit and before the inning was over, it was 4-2 Concordia.

Doan drove home another run for APU in the second and the Cougars put more pressure on in the third with Hailey Burns two-run double to give her team a 5-4 lead. But the Golden Eagles took the lead back for good in the bottom of the third on Gabby Villa’s two-run single to make it 6-5.

From there, Nishi shut down the Cougar offense and the Golden Eagles kept adding on. Kayla Simpson hit a two-run single in the fourth and Im doubled home two more runners in the fifth. When it was over, CUI had 12 hits in six innings and crossed the plate 12 times.

Pfeiler and Villa joined Im as hitting stars of the game with two hits each, and Villa had three RBI.

APU’s Dorn was a hitting machine throughout the tournament and was named the Most Outstanding Player. The left-handed hitting sophomore was 8-for-14 (.571) with four home runs, three doubles, 6 RBI and six runs scored.

Gossett was named the Outstanding Pitcher of the tournament, earning a win and a save in CUI’s first two games.

Concordia will take a 40-14 record into next week’s regional tournament. They will find out who they play on Sunday night’s Selection Show. Azusa Pacific, who was ranked No. 10 in this week’s regional poll, leaves the PacWest tournament with a 31-22 record.

“I am really proud of this team,” said APU head coach Carrie Webber. “I feel like we exceeded expectations, and I loved being on the field with them each day.”

For Concordia head coach Crystal Rosenthal, it was a very gratifying championship series.

“Coming into the tournament, we had a really rough couple of weeks,” she said in the postgame press conference. “But we had a different focus this week. Our offense really stepped up. It was gratifying to be able to win these final games on this field for our seniors.

“We are excited to go wherever they send us next week,” she said regarding the NCAA tournament. "Our focus has been on trying to win this tournament, so I haven’t thought much about next week. We are just excited to be together and get to play on.”