{"id":42391,"date":"2018-11-26T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T22:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42391"},"modified":"2018-11-27T08:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T14:27:35","slug":"historic-season-continues-for-fhsu-mens-soccer-as-tigers-embark-for-national-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42391","title":{"rendered":"Historic season continues for FHSU Men&#8217;s Soccer as Tigers embark for National Semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STORY BY RUSSELL HEITMANN<br \/>\nVIDEO BY NICK SCHWIEN<\/p>\n<p>It took just eight years, and only 100 victories for the FHSU men\u2019s soccer program to reach the threshold of the ultimate goal in collegiate sports \u2013 a national championship. In fact, it was the Tigers\u2019 100<sup>th<\/sup> win exactly which propelled them to the NCAA Division II semifinals to be held this week in Pittsburgh, PA.<\/p>\n<p>After hosting the Midwest and Central Regional Championships last week, FHSU advanced to the national semifinals after a come-from-behind victory over conference rival, Northeastern State in the Central Regional final, before dispatching Ohio Valley, 2-0, in the national quarterfinals. The Tigers are now winners of 14 matches in a row; however, their two most recent victories proved to be the most important in pushing the young program to the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s been a step that we\u2019ve been short of for four or five years now, so it felt good to get the monkey off our backs,\u201d said Brett Parker, head coach of the Tigers. \u201cBut I was really proud of the effort the guys put throughout the weekend in tough conditions against tough opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6_s3WxhfblA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Parker, who has amassed a 100-40-17 overall record in his eight years at the helm of the Tiger program, always had goals of reaching the final weekend of the season when starting the program in 2011, but getting there proved to be one of the more difficult achievements. Fort Hays has made the NCAA Tournament in all but their first year of being a program, and in that time the Tigers have advanced to the quarterfinal round three times, but hadn\u2019t been able to advance to the final stage \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dIt\u2019s always the goal [reaching the semifinals] when you\u2019re projecting 3-5-7 years out,\u201d said Parker. \u201cEarly in the process of building the program, you could tell we were close. We were able to tick all of the boxes early in the history of the program but this one was the toughest one. We were always just a few pieces short. You could tell early on that we had all the pieces it took in place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the continued post-season success of the Tiger program is one of the high points for Parker when looking at the overall success of FHSU soccer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is what I am most proud if is constantly competing in the postseason,\u201d said Parker. \u201cIt shows the depth of the program and that we have players who are committed to the program and who buy in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One such player is redshirt-senior midfielder, Tobias Patino, who is one of three seniors on this year\u2019s FHSU team who has played his entire career for the Tigers. For Patino, playing for a national championship and making it to the final weekend, is the one stage he has striven for in his time as a Tiger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery year that I have been here, you always think about that think about going to the final four,\u201d said Patino. \u201cYou always work for this. At this stage, you are still here and you are still trying to win a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And while the end goal is in sight for the Tigers, Patino knows their journey isn\u2019t over just yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[There is] definitely work to be done. I don\u2019t feel like we are satisfied, we are hungry,\u201d said Patino. \u201cJust two more games. I am confident with this team. I am confident with the coaching staff [and] we are confident and we believe in each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fellow senior, Abdoulaye \u201cYaya\u201d Cisse, feels reaching the national semifinals is gratifying for the Tiger program and brings Fort Hays Soccer some national recognition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was huge. Nobody really thinks of our conference and nobody thinks we can make it to that level,\u201d said Cisse. \u201cBut we&#8217;re past that stage, and seeing how hard the boys and the coaching staff worked to get there is really satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Parker recognizes what it means for his senior class to advance to the final weekend of the season. The Tigers fell in the national quarterfinal round three years in a row (2014, 2015, and 2016).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s great for those guys. They have been through a lot of ups and downs. Tobias was around for the first elite eight and now he gets to play in another one,\u201d said Parker. \u201dIt\u2019s a big difference between getting to an elite eight and getting to a final four. It showed how difficult is to get over that hump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Tigers flew out of Hays this afternoon for Pittsburgh and will train throughout the week before kicking off on Thursday at 11 a.m. eastern time against Barry University in the first semifinal match at Highmark Stadium. And although FHSU has expanded their trophy case in the past two years \u2013 winning back-to-back MIAA titles for the first league championships in program history \u2013 bringing a national championship trophy back to campus would be unimaginable for Parker.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t even think you can imagine what that would feel like,\u201d he said. \u201cThe trophies we have won here have been special to the players and the school. But winning a national championship would be a really special thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY BY RUSSELL HEITMANN VIDEO BY NICK SCHWIEN It took just eight years, and only 100 victories for the FHSU men\u2019s soccer program to reach&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":41048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3392,7349],"tags":[1479,69,604,3446,12437,11231,12438,12016,103,290,1474,12439],"class_list":["post-42391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mens-soccar","category-sports","tag-brett-parker","tag-fhsu","tag-fhsu-athletics","tag-fhsu-mens-soccer","tag-national-semifinals","tag-ncaa-dii","tag-pittsburgh","tag-russell-heitmann","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn","tag-tobias-patino","tag-yaya-cisse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/MensSoccerVLindenwood201811.jpg?fit=3189%2C2126&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42391"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42402,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42391\/revisions\/42402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}