UNIVERSITY PARK — Penn State has had a pretty strong legacy in women’s soccer, but it’s been a few years since they’ve been to this level.

But the Nittany Lions are anything but worried about how well they will handle the bright lights of their big opportunity.

The Penn State women’s soccer team is hopping on an airplane today, jetting to the West Coast for the NCAA College Cup. The Nittany Lions (20-3-2) will face Florida State (20-3) at 8:30 p.m. in one semifinal at San Diego’s Torero Stadium.

The other semifinal features defending national champion Stanford (21-1-1), which had played in the previous two title matches before finally winning, and 20-time champion North Carolina (14-5-2).

Those two programs have the big resumes, and the Seminoles were in the national semifinals last season and are there for the sixth time.

Penn State, meanwhile, is at the College Cup for just the fourth time and first since 2005 — when every member of the current team was in high school or junior high.

But with several key team members having played with national teams for various age levels, head coach Erica Walsh is hardly worried.

“These guys have competed on big stages,” said Walsh, who personally has coached at a College Cup, a World Cup and the Olympics. “Whether it’s academically, athletically, they’ve been on big stages. Even though they haven’t necessarily been at a College Cup, they’ve competed at the largest stage in our sport, which is the World Cup. We’ve had many players in our starting lineup that have been to the World Cup. Sometimes you see teams going to a final four for the first time and kind of getting big-eyed. I don’t get that feeling at all with this group.”

Junior forwards Maya Hayes and Taylor Schram were with the under-20 U.S. team that won a gold medal at the World Cup in Japan in September, the second time Hayes played with the team. Midfielder Christine Nairn also has been to a pair of World Cups with the U.S. under-20 team, freshman Raquel Rodriguez has played with her Costa Rican national team, goalkeeper Erin McNulty has played with the Canadian under-20 team at the World Cup as well as in the College Cup when she played at Florida State, and several other team members have trained with or been on team pools for various U.S. teams.

That kind of experience helped last Friday night, when the Nittany Lions didn’t falter in a taught 1-0 win over Duke to set up this weekend’s games.

“When you’re in a pressure situation, like (against) Duke, you’ve got to win, it was do-or-die,” Nairn said. “You can think back to moments that — this is just another game.”

Walsh also cited the university as a whole, and the football program, for how so many difficulties have been handled over the last year and how that has inspired her team.

“We’ve seen so many examples of leadership over the past year,” Walsh said. “These are the things that you go through to prepare you for these moments. These are the things that you lean on when you’re facing Duke and the wind’s 40 mph and you’re tired. These are the moments that you’re prepared for your whole life. I look at the different challenges that we could potentially face, and obviously you never know what’s going to be thrown at you, but what I do know is it’s not going to be anything greater than what we’ve already faced and that gives me a ton of confidence in my team.”

Maya’s year

Hayes and Schram have every reason to be exhausted at this point. They trained hard in the spring while helping the U.S. under-20 national team qualify for the World Cup, then trained hard over the summer before a tough month of games on their way to a gold medal.

They immediately came home, and while Schram had to miss a few games with a concussion, Hayes was back on Jeffrey Field a week later helping the Nittany Lions to a win.

Hayes said she’s thrilled to have a chance for one more highlight to her year.

“To win a win a World Cup, and then to know that we’re competing on the top stage for a national championship right now is really everything you could ask for in a season,” Hayes said. “I don’t take that likely at all. I’m ready to go to work.”

Seminole connections

A pair of Nittany Lions have direct ties to their Friday opponents. Walsh was an assistant coach at Florida State for a College Cup trip in 2005, working with Seminoles head coach Mark Kirkorian, while McNulty played two seasons as the Florida State keeper.

McNulty still ranks second on the career wins list for a keeper at the school. Thanks to an injury redshirt season and a year off to play with Canada at the under-20 World Cup, she still had two years of eligibility even after earning her degree. Penn State had an opening for a keeper and the graduate degree she wanted, and a match was made.

“What an unbelievable human being on and off the field,” Walsh said. “She perhaps may come across as a bit quiet, but once you get to know her, that’s not the case at all. (She has) a big personality, very thoughtful, a lot of work behind the scenes to make everybody feel comfortable and she has done a great job creating one team here at Penn State.”

Even though the Seminoles may be more familiar with McNulty than other opponents, Walsh doesn’t feel they will have any different “scouting” advantage than anyone else.

“In all sports, technology has gotten us to a point where we know everything about our opponent and the opponent knows everything about us,” Walsh said, “right down to what you like to have for breakfast.”

Who inspires you?

When asked about the work it took to get the program back to the College Cup after a seven-year absence, with a few rocky seasons thrown in there, Walsh said she didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

“For these guys, we’ve got a wonderful model in Rec Hall,” Walsh said, noting whose team offices are right down the hall from hers. “We’ve got wrestling and we’ve got women’s volleyball and for them to say … ‘We want to do whatever it takes,’ well, we’ve got a model of doing whatever it takes to win championships and that’s a blessing for us.”