MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Sustained success - an elusive level of achievement all collegiate athletic programs aim to attain.
 
Instant success is marveled. Sudden success is celebrated. Surprise success is appreciated.
 
But sustained success? That's the kind of success that is easy to brush off. Sustained success becomes equal to expected success.
 
In 23 years, coach Nikki Izzo-Brown has built the West Virginia University women's soccer team into a program that has achieved sustained success.
 
How is the success measured?
 
If it's by wins, the Mountaineers have those, as Izzo-Brown has led WVU to 340 since the program's first match in 1996.
 
If it's NCAA Tournament appearances, WVU is solid there, too, as the Mountaineers are currently playing in their 19th consecutive tournament, the fifth-longest active streak nationally.
 
If it's trophies, WVU has 17 conference titles, and if it's player accolades, the Mountaineers have hauled in their fair share: 52 All-America honors, 22 conference players of the year, 21 professional contracts, 19 Missouri Hermann Trophy candidates, 2 Olympic medalists and one Hermann Trophy winner.
 
Yet, numbers do not tell the complete story. Sometimes, success is measured by how a program handles adversity – and the Mountaineers faced their share to start the 2018 season.
 
WVU opened the year with two weekends away from Morgantown with matches at Penn State and Purdue. The Mountaineers dropped the first match in the stretch, as No. 5 Penn State scored in the 80th minute for a 1-0 win on Aug. 17. From there, WVU rattled off three straight draws, including a 0-0 tie against No. 19 Northwestern on Aug. 26, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
 
Suddenly, the Mountaineers, who opened the year ranked No. 9 nationally, were out of the United Soccer Coaches Poll. Following a 4-0 win against Xavier on Aug. 30 and a 2-0 loss to No. 11 Georgetown on Sept. 2, the Mountaineers were left out of all national polls for the first time since 2013.
 
WVU jumped on an airplane bound for Clemson, South Carolina, on Sept. 6, armed with a 1-2-3 record, an abnormal mark for a team that averaged just 2.75 losses over the course of the last four seasons. Needing a win to establish momentum and regain confidence, WVU earned its first road lead of the season with a goal from sophomore midfielder Stefany Ferrer-vanGinkel in the 41st, but the Tigers answered with a goal in the 68th minute.
 
The Mountaineers' season turned 13 minutes later. A Clemson penalty awarded WVU a free kick at midfield. Junior goalkeeper Rylee Foster sent the ball into the box, where senior forward Hannah Abraham headed it in for her first game-winning goal of the season, and the Mountaineers returned to Morgantown with their first road win of the year.
 
Since the victory, WVU is 14-2, with its lone defeats coming off opponent golden goals. The Mountaineers have posted 10 shutouts and outscored their opponents 39-6. Along the way, the players learned they are a "team of stars, not superstars."
 
"All of us at one point realized we don't have a Keisha (Kadeisha Buchanan) or Ashley (Lawrence) on this team, but we still have to get those jobs done," Izzo-Brown said. "This year, we knew everyone had to take responsibility for her job, and if she did, good things would happen.
 
"The one thing I talked to this team about a lot this year is that our strength is in our numbers, and we are a team of stars, not superstars. When you are a team of stars, every star has to shine bright. We don't need one to shine brighter. Everyone has to do her job, and this team has fully bought into it."
 
The Mountaineers (15-4-3, 7-2) opened the 2018 NCAA Tournament with an emphatic 6-0 victory over Radford on Nov. 10, at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium. Six different players tallied scores for WVU en route to a program NCAA Tournament record, and the Mountaineer backline held the Highlanders to just two shots, none on-goal, and also denied Radford a corner kick.
 
The performance came on the heels of the Mountaineers' three straight clean sheets at the 2018 Big 12 Soccer Championship, a title they claimed for the fourth time since 2013.
 
"The goal is to be playing our best soccer late in the season, and this team is doing just that," Izzo-Brown noted. "Most importantly, they are approaching this journey one game at a time."
 
This year's Mountaineers are not done writing their chapter in the program's long, successful history book.
 
"There's no secrets to success other than hard work," Izzo-Brown explained. "Sometimes, you have resistance. This team believed in each other and their potential and ability. More so, they believed in this staff and what we knew we could accomplish. They've had the right mindset the last few months. They want to win and were willing to sacrifice and do everything they could do to make sure we were able to get back into our winning ways.
 
"It's never easy, especially when you have 29 different players in a college environment."
 
No secrets to success, sure, but success cannot be denied when facts are considered, such as this gem – alongside Stanford, the 2017 and 2011 NCAA National Champion, West Virginia University women's soccer is one of two programs to earn a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in each of the last four NCAA Tournaments.
 
"Since the day I got here, this team has had high standards," two-time team captain and 2018 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year Bianca St. Georges said. "We know we won't make it if we only go halfway – we have to be all-in. Our team feeds off each other as we pursue success."
 
Players come and go. Wins and losses happen. Sustained success, though – that's a level of achievement that continues to grow with each passing season.
 
The No. 8-ranked and second-seeded Mountaineers continue play in the NCAA Tournament with a second-round match against Wake Forest tonight, at 6 p.m., at Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium. Tickets are on sale now at WVUGAME.com.