Dixie State: Soccer finishes seventh in PacWest

ST. GEORGE — The season ended for the Red Storm men's soccer team with a split of its final two games, defeating Academy of Art University and losing to Notre Dame de Namur University.

The Red Storm (6-11-1, 4-10) found their offensive fire power on Thursday at Hansen Stadium with a 3-0 win over AAU.

Head Coach Danny Ortiz said it was important for the team to come out, have some fun, and forget about how long it had been since the team had scored a goal.

"They've put in so much work with little reward," Ortiz said. "We didn't play any less hard tonight than we have for several of those games. We're just unlucky sometimes."

Freshman midfielder Josh Hernandez started the scoring for DSC in the 36th minute. Just one minute later junior midfielder Brent Knoblauch scored. In the second half junior midfielder Francisco Arellano wrapped up the scoring with a goal in the 63rd minute.

The celebration would be brief for the Red Storm as the NDNU Argonauts won 2-1 Saturday at Walt Brooks Stadium at Dixie High School.

The winning goal for NDNU came with less than eight minutes remaining in the game by Luis Astorga.

DSC worked to match the speed of the Argonauts, but it just wasn't enough to pull out a victory in the final game of the season.

Cristobal Montes opened the scoring for NDNU with 20 minutes remaining in the first half. The Red Storm would not go quietly into the night as Knoblauch responded five minutes later with a goal that sailed over the head of the NDNU goalkeeper.

Knoblauch, who will not return to the team next season because he plans to serve an LDS mission, said he was happy with the improvements the team made this year by winning one more game than last year. However, he also said the season did not go exactly as he had hoped.

"I can't complain," said Knoblauch, an integrated studies major from Seattle. "It's never as good as you want it to be. Hopefully next year will be better and they'll keep going. I'm hoping good things will come for [the team]. I'm excited to hear about it."

Ortiz said he felt the team was much better this year than it was last year.

"We couldn't play with (Notre Dame de Namur)," Ortiz said. "These guys were far better than us a year ago. We played with these guys today. (Our team) played hard from start to finish. We're excited about what's going to happen in the years to come. We've just got to keep going forward at this point."

The Red Storm finished seventh in the Pacific West Conference ahead of Chaminade University and AAU. The Grand Canyon University Antelopes were the winners of the PacWest and earned the automatic qualifier spot into the NCAA Division II Tournament.

Editor's note: The Dixie Sun is the student newspaper for Dixie State College.