The men’s soccer season has come to an end as the team finishes 8-8-3 while going 6-4-2 in conference play. Coming into the year, the team faced a series of changes.

The team had both a change in head coach and a new field to play on at the beginning of the season. Coach Nick Aguilar came in after Nate Houser got promoted to associate vice president of advancement and senior advisor for DE&I initiatives and got to work with the team.

“Sometimes when a new coach comes in, some things will change, maybe some expectations as well,” junior forward Hunter French said. “But, I don’t think the team dynamic changed up a whole lot with Coach Nick taking over.”

While the head coach change was an important change this season, another was the tough schedule the team had to face.

“We do play in the best conference in the nation for soccer. We have two or three teams in the top five every year,” French said. “In the preseason, we also scheduled tougher opponents to give us a sense of what we need to do to get better as the season started.”

That tough schedule continued as the Conference Tournament started on Nov. 5. The team faced off against the No. 11 team in the country in MidAmerica Nazarene. According to Aguilar, the match up didn’t go according to plan the first time when Baker faced them back on Oct. 19.

“We had a couple holes; some stars were out the first time we played, and we had to make a last-second change to personal and formation,” Aguilar said. “In the second half, we didn’t come out the way we wanted after the game plan worked in the first half.”

Aguilar explained that the mindset going into the tournament was that the season is “on the line” and that the team is healthier in this matchup than the last one against MNU.

Sophomore forward Gyorgy Kamaras, who is now a two-time first-team all-conference honoree, added that the team spirit is good going into the match against MNU.

“We had ups and downs during the season, but overall I feel that the team fought hard to finish in a good place for the conference playoff,”
Kamaras said. “We have worked on both sides of the ball and have been looking to find weak spots in our opponent’s game.”

Both Kamaras and Aguilar discussed the adjustments that needed to be made for the match against MNU but they also mentioned that with a bit of luck in some games, the team could have finished a bit higher. They were quick to say that getting the sixth seed is still an accomplishment in this conference.

The last game for the men’s soccer team was in Heart of America Conference Tournament against the three-seeded MidAmerica Nazarene where they lost the game 3-0. The loss ends the season for the Men’s soccer team, but Kamaras has high hopes for next year.

“We had new guys joining the team this year, so we needed to adjust,” Kamaras said. “I feel like everyone understands each other. So next year, we could finish even higher.”