Soccer teams win on, off field

The Milligan College men’s and women’s soccer teams have had successful seasons so far. Both teams hope to continue that success this weekend at the men’s Athletic Appalachian Conference semifinals and the women’s National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Regional semifinals.

The Lady Buffs entered into the AAC tournament last weekend seeded No. 5. After defeating No. 4 ranked King College, No. 1 seeded Covenant College (Ga.) and No. 2 Virginia Intermont College, they left as the AAC Champions.

“We’ve played a good hard schedule,” said women’s head coach Dave Dixon. “We are maturing and getting better in decision making.”

The winner of the men’s conference tournament will be decided this weekend.

The men’s team successes and attitude this season have not gone unnoticed by conference officials. In the conference results released last week, the men’s team won the Character of Champions award, which is decided by the coaches.

“One of the goals we set out this year was to win the Character of Champions award,” said men’s head coach Marty Shirley. “We did indeed win that out of a group of ten teams.”

Several of Milligan’s players have received individual goals recently. Senior Steven Townley was recognized as last week’s NAIA men’s soccer player of the week for leading the Buffs with six goals and one assist in three games. This week, sophomore Kristin Zutt was named the AAC and NAIA Region XII women’s player of the week for contributing one goal and one assist during the conference tournaments.

Senior Ali Mohamed was selected for the All-Conference first team, as well as being named the Player of the Year for the second year in a row. Senior Alex Kimani and Townley were also named to the first team. Sophomore David Lilly and fresman Kyle Wilcox were selected for the second team, and sophomores Travis Young and Caleb Bollman were both chosen to be part of the third team.

On the woman’s side, senior co-captain Kim Morris and freshman Dagmar Arnardottir were selected for the All-Conference first team. Zutt was named to the second team and freshman Stephanie Junkin was added to the third team.

Along with their exceptional athletic skills, the collegiate athletes struggled to balance schoolwork with practice and games. Sophomores Caleb Bollman, Megan Elrod, Justin Fuller and Laurie Selman, junior Stuart Makinson and seniors Jackie Goncalves and Ali Mohamed were named to the All-Conference academic teams.