The men’s soccer team closed off the regular season last Saturday with a 5-1 victory over Carlow University.

Despite losing their previous two games the Pioneers did not feel defeated after losing to two of the top teams in the conference and nation.

“We took a lot of positives from the games,” sophomore forward Roberto Whitley said. “We know that we could beat any team in the division.”

It was a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon when the Pioneers faced off against the winless Celtics, who are just finishing their second year as a program. They had only scored six goals all season.

Sophomore Juan Somoza started in net and made four saves on five shots, only giving up one goal.

Senior Josh Williams started the scoring in the 18th minute on a direct free kick. Carlow quickly came back, tying the score less than a minute later. This stood as Carlow’s only goal of the game.

In the 23rd minute, senior Allan Ramos added to his team-high goal total to put the Pioneers back on top. Sophomore Wessel Rietveld scored two more goals, making the halftime score 4-1.

With 28 minutes remaining in the game, Ramos netted his second of the game, the final goal in the 5-1 final. Ramos would go on to have a few more good chances for a hat trick that were stopped by Carlow’s goalkeeper.

The Pioneers ended their regular season with an overall record of 11-5 and a 6-3 River States Conference (RSC) record. Point Park will play in the RSC Quarterfinals Saturday at a location to be determined.

Going forward it is time for the team to start raising play as the postseason arrives.

“Our ultimate goal is to win all the games in order to make it to nationals,” junior Kakanou Fotie said. “We’ve played all of the teams and can measure our strength against theirs.”

The confidence level between the team is high right now after boasting one of the top offensive outputs in the RSC. Point Park averaged 3.25 goals per game during the regular season.

“Our confidence is very high,” Whitley said. “I am enjoying playing, especially with Ramos. We have a good relationship and score a lot of goals.”

Ramos and Whitley have combined for 25 of the team’s goals this season. They have scored 15 and 10 goals respectively.

It is looking like the goaltending duties will continue to be given to both Somoza and Ryan Daniels for the playoffs.

“We don’t discuss that too much,” Somoza said. “We are goalies. We just work as hard as we can and see who’s going up. It should be like that going forward.”