The pairings for the 57-team tournament were announced this morning. North Park (11-6-1) will play Macalester (13-4-2) as part of a four team regional. In the same region, Wheaton College (15-5-1) earned an at-large bid and will take on UW-Whitewater (14-2-1). The tournament berth is the first ever for the Vikings soccer program. “We feel like a huge sense of accomplishment,” says Coach John Born. “We set it as our number one goal coming into the season way back in August.”
Needing only a tie in their last game to secure a berth, the Vikings earned their place in the tournament by beating Wheaton 1-0 Saturday to capture the CCIW title. P.J. Eriksson, honored twice in the past month as CCIW Player of the Week, scored the game’s only goal at 33:44 into the first half, after Jamie Rose headed a free kick from Gabe Vogler.
Wheaton out-shot North Park 22-8, but goalie Austin Person played a brilliant game and racked up nine saves. This was the junior goalie’s eighth shutout of the season.
The victory was the third consecutive win over the Thunder, all of which came at Wheaton’s East McCully Field. “Our guys like playing there,” said head coach John Born, “Wheaton is like our second home.”
The Vikings won the CCIW championship last year but were denied a bid to the national tournament. Early in the season, it looked like the Vikings might not make it this year, either. The Vikings won their first two games and then dropped five straight against non-conference teams that were either ranked nationally or near the top of their conferences. Although painful at the time, the experience proved beneficial, Born says. “It helped us learn about ourselves,” Born says. “It really magnified some of our weaknesses that we could improve upon.”
The team did make the improvements and won all but two of its remaining games, including a tie. “We weren’t making a lot of the same mistakes in the second half of the season,” Born says.
Born credits the team’s attitude with helping to make the turnaround. “We’ve just got good kids with strong character,” Born says. “They never gave up.”
Born says Macalester is a “very, very good team” that has gone to the tournament many times. If North Park wins, their next tournament game would be scheduled for Sunday at 1 p.m.
Copyright © 2011 The Evangelical Covenant Church.
