POWELL, Wyo. -  The Western Nebraska Community College men’s soccer team saw their season come to an end with a 2-0 loss to Northwest College Saturday in the first round of the Region IX playoffs in Powell, Wyoming.
The other first-round men’s contest saw Central Wyoming College top Laramie County Community College 1-0. Central and Northwest advance to the semifinals to face the top two seeds Otero College and Casper College next weekend.
For the Cougars, they end their season at 3-7-5 as WNCC head coach Eseah Ingram said they will look to rebound next year.
“For the season, in the end, it’s all on me. Everything is and I’m to blame. I think I could have led better, I could have been more prepared, and just been an overall better coach and I let us down,” Ingram said. “But my work and our works starts now and I promise I’ll be better and we’ll be better next year. I’m thankful for my team and staff. I love my guys and I love what I do. I’m blessed, we’re bless, and I swear we’ll have our moment again.”
While it was a disappointing result, the game itself was competitive except for that one minute of play. Ingram said there were things in the game that they didn’t handle and that is what cost them.
“Game was tough, though there were some factors that were out of our control that really affected the game,” he said. “but today was a very unique experience for me, our staff, and this team and just resulted in an unlucky loss.”
The contest started out strong on both sides with neither team giving an inch. In the 33rd minute, WNCC lost a player because of a red card and four minutes later, Northwest scored their first goal on a Harrison Lloyd goal for the 1-0 lead. A minute later, Jack Kuspert scored to make it 2-0.
That would be the end of the scoring as the Cougars settled down and played even with them. The second half saw Northwest bring the ball up several times, but each time, they couldn’t get a decent shot off. WNCC had a couple great scoring opportunities in the second half, but just couldn’t capitalize.
WNCC had just one shot in the contest while Northwest had 15 shots. Northwest had four corner kicks while WNCC had Zero.