Men end season with loss to Hastings

The Northwestern men’s soccer team’s season came to a close Saturday in Hastings, Neb., as the squad fell 3-0 to the Broncos, the top team in the GPAC and defending national champs in NAIA.
Hastings won the opening toss and elected to start with the powerful wind at their backs and capitalized, scoring twice in the 14th and 17th minute to lead 2-0 at the break. The deficit was not discouraging to the squad, as the talk in the locker room remained positive.
“I’m not sure if mentally that was too much for the guys to overcome,” said head coach Dan Swier. “It seemed like they were up for the challenge in the second half.”
The Raiders pressed much harder in the second half with some help from the wind and got some pressure on the Hastings goal. Despite the increase in Raider shots, the Broncos added another goal, which put the Raiders away.
NW left with a healthy respect for Hastings, the defending national champions.
“Hastings is always good at soccer,” said junior Nathan Mastbergen. “They are a team that is on a different level than other teams on our schedule. I don’t think that I, or the rest of the defense, had a bad game by any means; however, when you play a team of Hastings’ caliber, even the smallest mistakes will be exposed, and that’s what happened to us in the first half.”
Sophomore left back Justin Lehman agreed.
“We knew going in that Hastings is good at stringing multiple passes together in order to get into dangerous areas of the field,” Lehman said. “They are strong defensively and offensively making them really tough to break down.”
Despite the end to their season, NW is positive and looking forward to next year.
“No one enjoys losing, especially when it brings an end to the season,” Mastbergen said. “[But] when I look back on our season, I realize that we were able to accomplish a lot. Winning more games this year than my first two seasons combined was a welcome change and showed me that we have moved past the rebuilding process.”
Freshman goalkeeper Luis Hernandez was more straightforward with his prediction.
“Great season,” Hernandez said. “We’re not graduating anybody, so next year we’re going to light up the conference.”