By: Abel Flessner
The men’s soccer team, a team who has experienced great success, including deep runs in the NACC tournament in recent years, made an early exit in the tournament this year.
“The season ended in a disappointing way,” Senior captain Ryan Gutierrez said, “we always want to make a deep run in the tournament, but this wasn’t the case this year.”
In Gutierrez’s four years at DU, he won the NAAC championship once, and made it out of the first round in the tournament twice. This year, the stars lost to MSOE, 3-0, a tough team that commonly wins the NAAC championship.
“Towards the season we hit a bit of a rough patch,” Junior and leading goal scorer Tristen Banquil said, “we played all the hardest teams, but had one goal in mind. We wanted to make sure we made it into the conference tournament. I think we were able to do that.”
With a freshman heavy team, and a miniscule number of seniors, perhaps the Stars knew this might be an off year.
“A big part of it was because of our rebuilding year,” Gutierrez said, “we have a lot of new Freshmen. A lot of guys are getting used to what DU soccer is all about. For me being a returner for the past for years, it was all about me teaching them the ways of Domincan soccer and passing it on to them.”
At the end of a disappointing season, it is important to reflect on what went wrong in the season.
“One thing that stopped us was from the start of preseason, we didn’t really have enough guys come in ready,” Gutierrez said, “we were struggling with fitness, sometimes on the ball, so we were kind of playing catch-up this whole year. All my previous years it has been better in that aspect.”
Having a very young team could be a hard adjustment, especially for a team who has had so much recent success.
“It’s all about getting used to college soccer,” Gutierrez said, “it’s a fast game.”
The team, obviously upset about the ending to the season, is already focusing on the future.
“I think we came out of this with a lot of hunger and drive going into the offseason,” Banquil said, “I think a lot of the guys are really driven to make sure next year is a completely different story.”
Head coach, Eric Baumann, used this past week to add an additional week of practice after the season. The Stars are now done witth their season completely.
“This week is the last week we are able to train as a team,” Banquil said, “our coaches wanted to get everybody who’s still here back together one last week of scrimmaging, playing, fun activities.”
As the Stars look forward to next season, there are some key areas they can work on, both on and off the field.
“We have to work on everything if I’m being honest,” Banquil said, “the biggest thing is committing to just really going at it. We have a couple of moments where we as a team did not do our job off the field, so a key focus is getting our heads in the game during this offseason.”
In order to mirror previous success, the team has to show more fight, especially on the field.
“In the future, we have to keep competing, winning a championship in our conference that’s gotten better every year is going to be difficult,” Gutierrez said, “I would take one day at a time, always live in the present and just enjoy college soccer because it goes by fast.” Gutierrez said.
As the season is officially over, the Stars look to head into the 2026 season, conditioned, and ready to tackle a tough NAAC conference, getting back to success seen in previous years.