FARMVILLE, Va. – The night before Longwood's opening-round game against Gardner-Webb in the Big South Championship, team captain Madison Lockamy had a premonition.
 
"I had a dream about this happening," she said. "I scored a goal in the first five minutes, and we won."
 
Saturday night, the All-Big South first-team midfielder made that vision a reality.
 
Just 3:24 into the No. 3 seed Lancers' first-round matchup against the No. 6 seed Runnin' Bulldogs, Lockamy scored a go-ahead goal from 30 yards out to give Longwood (8-7-4) a lead it would not relinquish on the way to a 2-0 victory at the Longwood Athletics Complex.
 
The win propels the Lancers to the Big South Championship semifinals for the third time in the past five years where they will face No. 2 seed High Point this Thursday, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m. in High Point, N.C. It will also be the third such semifinal trip for Lockamy and her fellow midfielder, team captain, and fifth-year Lancer Madison Hommey, who commanded the midfield for all 90 minutes at Lockamy's side Saturday night.
 
"Obviously every time I step on the field, I want to win a Big South Championship," said Lockamy, who was presented with her second career All-Big South award in a pregame ceremony Saturday. "That's the goal every year, but I really felt like this was the year we could do it. With Hommey and me coming back and such a skillful team, I felt like this was the year we could accomplish that."
 
Longwood's skill was on display throughout, as the Lancers held Gardner-Webb (8-12-0) to just two shots on goal, amassed a 16-7 shot advantage, and matched a season high by earning 10 corner kicks, of which Hommey took every one. And along with the offensive contributions of Longwood's upperclassman on Lockamy's opening strike, freshman Julia Gill found the net as well by finishing off a threaded needle of a pass from Lockamy in the 81st minute for her first career goal.
 
Those two strikes allowed senior goalkeeper Jordan Horacek to earn her eighth shutout with one save, which was a diving stop in the 79th minute that preserved what was then a 1-0 Longwood lead. Sophomore defender Amanda Arnone also made a defensive save of her own in the 17th minute to help the Lancers engineer their fourth home shutout in October.
 
"That definitely felt like a tournament game: tight, nervy and combative from beginning to end," said Longwood head coach Todd Dyer, who has now led Longwood to five Big South semifinals and one Big South Championship game in the program's 10 years in the conference.
 
"The early goal got us going, but Gardner-Webb hung tough, and we really couldn't build on that momentum. [Maddi] Turlington was a handful all night, but we expected that. The bottom line is we earned the result we needed, and now we get to play again."
 
Longwood All-Freshman defender Brooke Bonner also played a role in that effort, marking the Big South Offensive Player of the Year Turlington throughout and helping limit her to just one shot on goal. Fellow backfield starters Catharine Forst and Alayna Palamar also put in 90-minute efforts in the absence of All-Big South first-team center back Kylie Cahill, while reserve defender Kaley Unger also contributed 31 minutes off the bench.
 
Now the Lancers will have five days to prepare for the semifinal rematch against No. 2 seed High Point, which snapped Longwood's six-game win streak and eight-game unbeaten streak in the last meeting on Oct. 20. A win over the Panthers would send Longwood back to the Big South Championship game for the first time since 2017 and would pit them against the winner of No. 1 seed Campbell and No. 4 seed Radford on Nov. 7.
 
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