Men's club soccer team fights for regional seed

No one ever said that it would be easy to defend a national championship, but the men’s club soccer team could not possibly have thought it would be this hard.

IU (5-3-2) started off the season with high aspirations to qualify for nationals and repeat as champions. Now entering the final weekend of regular season play, the team is fighting for the shot to make it into the regional tournament.

After a slow start to the season, the Hoosiers have won their last three contests and head to Southern Illinois on Friday and then face Iowa at 12 p.m. Sunday at Karst Park in Bloomington.

These two games are must-wins for IU as they look toward the regional tournament Halloween weekend.

Senior defender John Rosenberger said he believes the team has finally gotten its act together after a slow start.

“The momentum is turning our way,” he said. “Instead of thinking about losing games, we are knowing that we can win and are winning games.”

Lack of scoring plagued the Hoosiers in the early part of the season, but members of the team also attributed troubles to the lack of intensity in practices.

To turn around the season, players said they knew they had to recommit themselves to practicing the way they wanted to play.

Sophomore midfielder Reid Bergstrom said the team has picked up the effort in practice over the last couple weeks and that this has helped account for the team’s recent successes.

“We’ve worked harder at practice, and we’ve got on each other about not working hard,” he said. “We need to have the intensity that we haven’t had all season.”

Playing as a team will be crucial in these final games as the Hoosiers become aware of the circumstances and importance of this weekend.

In order to be invited to play at regionals, IU must be in the top 12 teams in the region. Currently, the team sits just outside the top 10 ranked teams.

Senior midfielder Andrew Conley has seen the turnaround the team has recently had and said he hopes that this will lead it into a successful final week.

“We have had a pretty good end of the season, so we can bring that into regionals and hopefully uphold ourselves as national champions,” he said.