BEAUMONT, Texas -- April Trowbridge and seven other Northwestern State soccer players were itching to get back to the postseason after the Lady Demons made an improbable 2016 run.
 
Now NSU is back in the Southland Conference Tournament for the second time in three seasons as the No. 8 Lady Demons (10-9, 4-7 SLC) take on No. 1 Central Arkansas (15-3-1, 10-1 SLC) on Wednesday in an 11 a.m. match.
 
The game, which kicks off the entire tournament, will be broadcast live on the Southland Digital Network (southland.org/live) and on the Southland Conference app.
 
"It's definitely exciting to be back after a hard loss in 2016," said Trowbridge, whose 13 goals scored leads the league and is tied for second in NSU single-season history. "We were hoping to get back and get to the next round, and we have to come together and make sure we're playing for one another.
 
"The big lesson we learned (from 2016) is that anything could happen, and you have to expect the unexpected."
 
NSU fell to McNeese in overtime in 2016, the program's first tournament appearance since 2008.
 
Eight players from that 2016 squad will lead the Lady Demons on the field Wednesday, including five players who logged minutes in that game.
 
Senior defender Ysmina Smith was a starter in that contest, and she's thrilled she'll get one more crack at the postseason.
 
"The time to do it is in your last year, and we pulled through our last couple of games to secure a spot, and it feels amazing," said Smith, whose 59 career starts leads the team. "Anything can happen. It's about whoever shows up during the game, whoever is ready.
 
"It doesn't matter where you finished in the standings, anybody can come out and beat another team. You have to be prepared and never underestimate anyone."
 
NSU won three of its last four matches to surge into the postseason after being out of the tournament picture until the final two weeks.
 
The Lady Demons trounced Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on the road (3-0) before posting a perfect home weekend with wins over No. 6 seed Southeastern (1-0) and Nicholls (3-2, overtime).
 
First-year co-head coach Jess Jobe guided a team that crawled out of an early-season hole and clawed its way into the postseason.

"That's a testament to how much this team wanted to be in the position we are now," said Jobe, who with co-head coach Anna Jobe because just the second and third NSU coaches to make the tournament in their first seasons. "They stayed focused and grinded week after week, attacking specific things in training and coming up with results when it really mattered.
 
"Down the stretch, we got into games that started to be must-wins. We kept ourselves in the race, and we have to go back and build on what made us successful to that point. We have to have that same mentality."
 
NSU's only loss in the last four games came to Central Arkansas in the regular-season finale as the Bears raced to a 5-0 win this past Friday.
 
Five days later, NSU aims to prove that Friday's loss isn't representative of its season.
 
"We have to be a little more organized as a team and get back to that mentality," Jess Jobe said. "We're OK with being an underdog, an eight seed playing a one seed.
 
"That's a space we're comfortable in, and we've exceeded some expectations already. We're looking in the face of a big challenge, and it's OK to have a chip on your shoulder. We didn't present UCA with as good of a challenge as we could have, and I think we're a much better team than we showed."
 
The Lady Demons can point to two other matches in which NSU was competitive against teams that were atop the standings at that time.
 
NSU outshot both Lamar (3 seed) and Houston Baptist (2 seed) in 1-0 losses on the road, the latter in overtime.
 
Now the Lady Demons must learn from Friday's loss as the program seeks its first SLC Tournament victory since 2005 in which NSU won the whole tournament and earned an NCAA Tournament berth.