Playoff fever is coming to Omaha, as the Creighton University men’s soccer team will play host to the defending NCAA National Champions: the University of Maryland Terrapins.
This will be the Bluejays seventh and final spring exhibition game, topping off a very successful spring season. The Jays won matches over Notre Dame (1-0), Eckerd College (3-0), the University of Denver (2-1) and the Venezuelan youth national team (4-2). They also tied Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wizards (2-2).
But this match on Sunday, some suggest, will be more difficult than any of those games.
“We have been preparing really hard for the Maryland game on Sunday,” sophomore forward Tucker Sindlinger said. “It’s great that we can have such a competitive game to close out the spring season. It certainly won’t feel like a spring game.”
Sunday’s game will have somewhat of a bittersweet atmosphere about it as the teams clash at Morrison Stadium. On Dec. 6, 2008, the men’s team lost in a heartbreaking 1-0 decision in the NCAA Regional Finals to Maryland in College Park, Md.
“Losing to Maryland in the Elite Eight was not the way we wanted our season to end,” Sindlinger said. “But the work we do from now until next fall will go a long way in helping us reach our goals.”
This is a unique matchup not only because of the rematch aspect, but also because this is the second consecutive year that a reigning NCAA national champion will be playing a spring game at Creighton. Last spring, then-defending National Champion Wake Forest played in an exhibition game that ended in a 1-1 tie.
“I thought it was wonderful [to play Wake Forest],” head coach Bob Warming said. “Our guys had heard and read on the Internet of how dominant Wake [Forest] had been last year. We got to play them and tied them and I think it helped our guys with not being intimidated by them if we were to face them in the fall.”
Warming enjoys facing stiff competition in the exhibition season such as Wake Forest and Maryland and believes it provides a good indicator of the season to come.
“It is a good way to measure where you are as a team,” he said. “It’s also a great video to watch of how you perform against some of the top players in college soccer.”
Warming believes the crowd is an enormous factor in winning against tough competition.
“The Maryland students really helped Maryland win the match,” he said. “It was a very loud atmosphere at the match and they were all over our guys. That might be the only payback our players would like to see–they would love to see our students get behind the Jays one more time this year and help us get a win.”
The match is set for 12:30 PM on Sunday, April 26 at Morrison Stadium. All students are encouraged to attend the game to cheer the Bluejays on to a victory.