Men’s soccer team wins the PBC championship for the first time

By Brad Ciociola
Staff Writer

The UNCP men's soccer team won its first ever Peach Belt Conference championship with a 3-1 win against USC Upstate. The men who hosted the conference tournament beat Lander 2-1 in the semi-finals to advance to the championship. The Braves, down 0-1 to the Spartans in the final period tied the game on a goal by senior Ozug Baytar; 28 seconds later sophomore Trond Myrland put one in to take the lead with what proved to be the game winner. Mircea Cosac, a sophomore, added a goal at the end for the 3-1 win.

Myrland was voted tournament MVP with his game-winning goal in the championship game and two assists in the semi-final.

Also, Baytar and Myrland, along with seniors Sascha Gorres and Joe Warenda were voted to the Peach Belt Conference All Tournament Team, while Head Coach Mike Schaeffer was voted Peach Belt Conference Coach of the Year, his third such honor.

The Braves ended the regular season at 14-2, 6-0 in conference play.

“It's been a long time coming. The guys worked really hard to pull this off,” Schaffer said of his team’s accomplishments this year.

This is UNC Pembroke's first conference championship in any sports next to a shared volleyball championship in 1993.

It is also Schaeffer's first conference championship. He says, “I've been here 25 years. It's about time," Schaeffer said.

The Braves hosted the opening round of the NCAA Div. II tournament Nov. 11th. Coach Shaeffer talked of his team's goals, “We set goals for ourselves, regular season championship, conference championship, and we figured if we did that we'd get in the NCAA tournament. If we got that, our goal was to go as far as we could.

“Last year we were excited to be there, now we want to go as far as we can,” he said.

“It won't be enough to be in the tournament. If we don't win the first game then we'll feel like we didn't accomplish what we wanted to,” Schaeffer said.

He gave his team an analogy of what they needed to do to advance to the final rounds in Texas. "It's the Texas two-step. We're two steps from Texas. Its win two and go to Texas, we need to take it one step at a time.”