KEENE, N.H. - Senior Sarah Swann (Oxford, Conn.) scored her conference-leading 14th goal of the year on an assist from sophomore Sam Konopka (Hebron, Conn.) and senior Kim Church (Farmington, Conn.) made six saves as second-seeded women's soccer won its third Little East Conference championship in seven years with a 1-0 win over top-seeded Keene State College Saturday.

With its fifth shutout victory in its last seven outings, Eastern (12-5-3) qualifies for its fourth NCAA tournament (third under tenth-year head coach Chris D'Ambrosio), which gets underway Thursday. Keene (14-6-2) had a three-game winning streak snapped and lost in the tourney final for the seventh time in nine appearances, falling to the Warriors for the third time in four tries in the clinching game. Eastern is 2-1 against Keene in finals played at Keene.

The title is the first for seniors Swann, Chuch, Taylor MacDonald (Oak Bluffs, Mass.), Christine Lemieux (South Windsor, Conn.), who had lost in the title game to Western Connecticut the previous two years after being eliminated by Keene in the team's first conference tournament game in 2006.

Church, selected the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, made several game-saving saves among her six, with two coming in the first half and another in the second. In the first half, Church made hand saves on two consecutive Keene bids. First, she deflected a shot by Keene scoring leader Katie Bradford off the crossbar, then re-gained her feet to knock away the rebound.

Konopka, who played 67 minutes off the bench, set up Swann's game-winning goal in the 69th minute with a free kick for her second assist of the season -- both coming in the last three matches.

The Warriors pulled off their second championship game win on Keene's field in three tries despite getting little or not contributions from three injured players:sophomore back Laura Violette (Wallingford, Conn.), sophomore forward Lauren Greeney (Bethel, Conn.) and freshman forward/midfielder Kelly Wallace (South Windsor, Conn.), the conference assist leader. Wallace was pulled from the starting lineup after only 23 minutes, while Greeney was limited to 33 minutes off the bench. Violette missed her sixth game of the season after re-injuring her ankle recently.

Since losing 2-1 in overtime at Keene State Sept. 26, Eastern is 8-2-2 in its last 12 matches. The Owls had gone unbeaten (6-0-1) in the conference regular-season in winning third first Little East regular-season title since 2004