Every dog has its day. For the senior Bulldogs on the women’s soccer team, Senior Night on Saturday against Columbia will be theirs.

The team’s four seniors — captain and forward Emma Whitfield ’09, forward Maggie Westfal ’09, defender Natalia Mann ’09 and defender Hayley Zevenbergen ’09 — will be honored prior to kickoff. But that’s not the only thing that Yale has to celebrate this week.

Three Elis earned the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District I honors. Westfal was named to the first team and will move on to the national ballot. She won that honor this season with eight goals and 24 points, along with her first career hat trick. Mann, fresh off her winning penalty shot against Central Connecticut on Wednesday night, was named to the second team. Meanwhile, forward Becky Brown ’11, in only her second season with the Bulldogs, earned third-team recognition.

Coming off Wednesday’s double-overtime win, Yale (8-5-2, 2-2-1 Ivy) will look to build upon its successes when it takes on the Lions (10-3-2, 3-1-1) at 7 p.m. Saturday.

“Central Connecticut beat UConn and Fairfield, and they are most likely going to the NCAA tournament,” midfielder Leslie Perez ’10 said. “I just wish a win like this came earlier in the season so that it could have possibly changed the way the rest of our games turned out. We’re finally figuring out which formation works best and which players excel in each position.”

While a win this weekend will keep the Bulldogs in the Ivy title race, a loss or a tie will mathematically eliminate them. But they face a considerable challenge: Columbia sits in second place in the Ivy League.