By CAYDEN SANDERS
Tiger Media Network
Entering the final week of the Great American Conference regular season, the Fort Hays State men’s soccer team has locked the No. 1seed. After 10 weeks, the Tigers find themselves No. 4 in the nation and No. 1 in Super Region 3 with a record of 14-0-3 and a 10-0-1 mark in GAC play.
FHSU only has one game left on its schedule and has already secured the right to host next week’s GAC Tournament and will likely host NCAA postseason games as well.
“We’re taking it game by game,” FHSU Head Coach Alex Nichols said. “We have higher goals than the conference tournament. We are taking it game by game, but we have higher goals for the national tournament.”
Tonight, the Tigers travel to Wichita to play in-state foe Newman. The Jets (7-4-5, 4-3-3) are tied for third with Northeastern State in the standings with 15 points, just one ahead of Southern Nazarene (14 points). The Jets have two games left and must win once to secure a spot in the GAC tournament. FHSU knows that Newman is playing with their backs against the wall.
“They’re (Newman) definitely going to be coming in fighting on Thursday, they have a lot on the line,” senior defender Jackson Elgas said. “But, I honestly think that we should be the number one team in the country. So I think the boys will have that fight in them because we are not the top team in the nation and want to have a good showing against Newman.”
Junior defender Collin Hershberger, a native of Newton, is looking forward to having a “homecoming game” for one final time.
“This game is huge for me. I’ve always wanted to stay local, go to a college close to home. My family’s a big part of my life,” he said. “Being that I live so close, I’ll have a lot of friends, a lot of family, and former coaches will be there. It’ll just add to my motivation. I want to win, I’m really competitive. I want to bury them.”
The Tigers have been the most dominant team in the seven seasons of the GAC/MIAA era, earning 86.1% of the total points in a single season’s conference race. However, the team did not realise they were conference champions until the way home from last weekend’s games.
“It was kind of on the way back, after the game against Harding, when we were on the bus. We had the realization of our conference championship, and how good it feels,” Elgas said. “I am never going to forget that feeling with the team and the guys on the bus.”
The Tigers were awarded the No.1 seed in the current release of the NCAA Tournament Super Region Rankings. But for one Tiger, his former team is coming in hot in the final weeks of the season.
Junior forward Dylan Ashford, a transfer from Rockhurst University, is seeing his former team’s success from a different view.
“Some of my best friends from college are from the Rockhurst team, so I’m happy for them. But they are not the team that we are,” Ashford said. “We are all friends, there’s no bad blood between me or any of them. We are competitors and that’s all it is. I wish them the best and I hope to see them in the national tournament.”
Ashford still keeps up with his former teammates and loves to see the success they have had down the stretch. Rockhurst captured a Great Lakes Valley Conference regular-season title with a tie in its last match-up.
Ashford has made Fort Hays his new home, and this past weekend, he scored his second goal as a Tiger.
“It’s more of just a confidence boost than anything. I think it’s good to get all the minutes that I can before getting into bigger and bigger games,” Ashford said. “I was buzzing. I needed a couple more goals under my belt. So it was good to get one more this past weekend.”
FHSU concludes the regular season at 7 p.m. tonight at Wilkins Field in Wichita, hoping to complete the first unbeaten regular season in program history.
“They’ve got two games left, so it’s not just what happens with us. We’ll treat them like we would any other game,” Nichols said. “We’re getting to the point where it’s postseason play, so we just need to get better at what we can control.”
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