The Western Nebraska Community College men's soccer team wrapped up the regular season Saturday in suffering a 3-0 weather-shortened contest to Northwest College at Landers Soccer Complex.
The Cougars finish the regular season at 3-6-5 overall and 3-4-2 in conference play.
WNCC will now wait until after next weekend to see if they make the playoffs. Currently, the Cougars are sitting in sixth place and the top six teams make the post-season. There is a chance the Cougars could move up to fifth if the right teams win next weekend.
The Region IX playoffs begin October 18 with the third through sixth seeds facing each other with the top two seeds getting a bye.
WNCC head coach Eseah Ingram said it wasn't the team's best performance on the pitch Saturday.
"I thought it was disappointing. To be honest, I believe we came ready to play just lost composure at times and the result ended badly," he said. "In the end, it's on me as a coach to be better and I was not at my best today and my team followed my instructions and it led to a tough loss. Tough to have a performance like that on sophomore day, but hopeful we are able to get another chance to play. This is a talented team and I believe in them with all I've got. I promise everyone if we get another chance, we will be ready and we will compete to win the region again."
The early part of the match was a battle as neither team had a lot of shots and there was plenty of good defense. Northwest scored first with 21:29 left in the half when Shay Lonergan scored on a nice play from teammate Sora Taenaka to make it 109.
The Trappers added a second goal in the 42nd minute when Lonergan scored his second goal, this time from an assist from Axel Lopez to make it 2-0.
WNCC had a chance to get on the scoreboard just 30 seconds after Northwest scored, but their freekick went wide. Then, a big turning point with no time on the clock when WNCC was issued a red card and they had to play the second half a man down.
The second half was played tough as WNCC came out and had a nice chance to score when Tomoaki Kamiya took a shot that just went high just four minutes into the second half.
A few minutes later, Alvaro Abeal, one of the eight sophomores that was recognized before the game, had a free kick but the Cougars couldn't get anything from it.
Northwest made it 3-0 when Oziel Adrian Escobedo scored in the 57th minute off an assist from Lonergan.
WNCC kept fighting despite a man down when they had a free kick that wouldn't go in. Later, Anthony Leumus, another sophomore that was recognized before the game, had a shot and the rebound went to Kamiya who missed.
WNCC later had a corner kick as the skies started to darken with an storm coming in and the Cougars couldn't capitalize.
The match was stopped with about 22 minutes to play when lightning was detected five miles away and then the rain game and the teams decided to call the contest.
WNCC had nine shots in the contest while Northwest had seven shots. Abeal led the Cougars with four shots, two of which were on goal.
Owen Henderson, a sophomore, was in goal and had three saves in net.
Besides Abeal, Lemus, and Henderson, the other five sophomores recognized before the game was Tomas Guzman, Yediel Hernandez, Mederique Eboucle, Brady Smallwood, and Jeff Laguerre.