Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[Kuiper]

Upset of the year!!!!!

Lewis & Clark 2 - Whitworth 0

The winless streak is over!  First win since the program started (or restarted) in 2022. L&C scores in the 48th and the converted a PK in the 68th to walk away with the win!

This is shocking tidbit from the L&C Athletics and Men's Soccer Instgram about today's historic victory.

"Juniors Sam London and Eli Kraft each scored to lead @lcottsmsoc to their first win since returning to varsity status. Senior Micaiah Garan made 5 saves to help the River Otters post their first win, first conference win and first road win since the late 1980s."

[Kuiper]

Other results in Region X that caught my eye

St. Thomas 0 - Howard Payne 0

HP has been much improved this season, but beating Penn State Berks and Brandywine doesn't exactly mean you're good. It may have given them confidence, though, as they stymie St. Thomas at home in their first game back from the PA trip, a team that beat Hardin-Simmons 5-1 last week.

Redlands 2 - Caltech 0

As I predicted in my game preview for EJay, Redlands took this one.  Redlands benefitted from a bad Caltech back pass to the GK that went into the goal in the 7th minute, but added one of their own from a great shot by Zach Darmanyan later in the 1st half and that was all they needed.

Occidental 1 - Pomona-Pitzer 0

Pretty even game, but Andrew Lee broke the deadlock early in the 2nd half and Oxy held on for the win. 

La Verne 2 - Chapman 1

Chapman found itself down 2-0 late in the second half and scored 1 goal in the 81st minute, but couldn't find another to repeat the magic it had against Caltech.  La Verne continues to show that it is a hard out in the SCIAC this season.

CMS 2 - Cal Lutheran 1

CMS finally gets a win after going winless the previous three games.  I don't think they should be a ranked team at this point of the season after tying Wheaton (IL) and losing to Whittier on Wednesday, but they at least come back from a 1-0 deficit early in the 2nd half on a Daniel Zhu brace to beat Cal Lu away.

Pacific Lutheran 1 - Pacific 0

Not a very convincing win for a PLU team trying to regain its NWC dominance.  It took an 85th minute goal for the Lutes to break a 0-0 tie and walk away with a win at home.

Puget Sound 3 - George Fox 3

Puget Sound remains undefeated and continues to show that it can score, but George Fox is not a particularly good team and held a 3-1 lead midway through the first half before letting Puget Sound back into the game with two second half goals.

Whitman 2 - Linfield 0

Whitman held serve in its game against lowly Linfield (which, for the first time, is looking up at Lewis & Clark in the standings!). It scored in the 3rd and 10th minutes and that was all it needed.

[Ron Boerger]

Upset of the year!!!!!

Lewis & Clark 2 - Whitworth 0

The winless streak is over!  First win since the program started (or restarted) in 2022. L&C scores in the 48th and the converted a PK in the 68th to walk away with the win!

That makes them 1-68-4 since returning to varsity status in 2022 (the program was halted in 1991).  Congratulations to the River Otters and to all the young men who stuck with it through thick and thin.  Keeper Micaiah Garan is the only player in that time to record a clean sheet and yesterday marked his third.

[Ron Boerger]

Trinity(TX) 4, Hardin-Simmons 0

The Tigers eat well against a struggling (1-5-0) HSU squad, with Eduardo Parra scoring a brace on his only two shots and Landon Ortega picking up a goal and two assists.  Perhaps most notably, Trinity played three goalies who had yet to see playing time this season, with starter Jack Madsen (6'2" soph from Highland Park TX) earning his first career win (and first time between the posts in two seasons) after playing the entire first half.  Given Trinity's 29-1 shot advantage this turned out to be a very low-risk move. 

[Kuiper]

A few notes from some of the games today in Region X

1.  Hardin-Simmons has fallen so far that Trinity, which hasn't played like it can assume it will dominate anyone this season thus far, used the H-S game as a "give everyone minutes" game.  Examples:  (a) They started a back-up keeper and ultimately played three keepers.  (b) No one played more than 57 minutes and most regular starters played much less or didn't start at all.  (c) They played 32 players in all, with only 1 getting fewer than 15 minutes (and that was Julian Lopez, who was on the 2025 NCAA All-Tournament team).  Trinity still ended up winning 4-0 and outshot Hardin-Simmons 29-1

2.  As I predicted after Rhodes destroyed East Texas Baptist 6-1 on Friday, Sewanee took its turn thrashing them today, beating them 5-1.  This was a road trip to forget. 

3.  When Mary Hardin-Baylor beat Whitworth 5-0, we thought UMHB was setting itself up to be dominant in Region X this year.  After Whitworth lost to Lewis & Clark yesterday and tied Linfield 1-1 today, UMHB's victory looks a lot less shiny and its subsequent losses to Whitman and Trinity suggest that some of the strongest teams from Region X last year aren't giving that title up without a fight.  Still, the Cru's 1-0 victory over Texas Lutheran today is a reminder that they are a solid team and are still the odds-on favorite to win the ASC automatic bid with Hardin-Simmons and East Texas Baptist in free fall.

4.  Notwithstanding Whitman and Trinity's recent successes, Southwestern and Colorado College are probably the teams to beat right now in Region X, along with Redlands.  Southwestern is now 6-1 after beating Concordia and Colorado College scored an impressive 2-2 tie @ Wisconsin-Eau Claire, although they might feel like it was a loss considering CC was up 2-1 until Eau Claire evened it up in the 85th minute.

[Kuiper]

No surprise that Southwestern, Colorado College, and Redlands are top three in the Region X poll.

United Soccer Coaches

Region X Poll #2 Sept. 22, 2026

Rank   School   Prev   W-L-T
1   Southwestern University   NR   6-1-0
2   Colorado College   NR   4-1-1
3   University of Redlands   NR   4-1-2
4   Claremont-McKenna-Harvey Mudd-Scripps Colleges   NR   4-2-1
5   Pacific Lutheran University   NR   4-1-1
6   Whittier College   NR   1-0-2
7   Occidental College   NR   3-2-1
8   Trinity University (Texas)   NR   3-2-2

[Kuiper]

USC Region IX Poll #2 Sept. 22, 2026

Rank   School   Prev   W-L-T
1   St. Olaf College   NR   7-0-0
2   University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire   NR   4-0-2
3   Saint John's University   NR   7-1-0
4   University of Wisconsin-Platteville   NR   3-1-1
5   Macalester College   NR   2-1-3
6   Luther College   NR   2-1-1
7   Augsburg University   NR   1-0-4
8   Gustavus Adolphus College   NR   2-2-1
Also receiving votes: Grinnell College

[Kuiper]

First 6th Street Rivalry game on CMS' new field tomorrow

Pomona-Pitzer @ Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Wednesday 9/23 at 7:00 pm

This is a rare game in the rivalry where the teams come in fairly evenly matched.

They both come in at 1-1 in SCIAC play.  Pomona is 4-3 overall and CMS is 4-2-1.

Both beat Cal Lutheran (Pomona won 3-0 and CMS won 2-1).  Both had 1-0 losses in their other game (Pomona lost to Oxy 1-0 and CMS lost to Whittier 1-0).

As it turns out, Pomona may have had the harder non-conference schedule, traveling to Ohio to play Kenyon and Denison and losing 2-0 and 1-0, respectively.  CMS played Trinity and beat them 1-0, but they played them at home and Trinity hasn't been as strong as their ranking suggested when they played.  They did travel to Illinois and played North Park, losing 1-0, but they also tied Wheaton (IL) 2-2, which is 2-4-1 thus far.

Pomona has scored 12 and conceded 5 goals, while CMS has scored 10 and conceded 7 goals.

But you can throw out the records and the stats in a 6th street rivalry game.  Will they actually make the new Nakasone Field, which has a 3000 person seating capacity because they just converted the old football stadium to a soccer stadium, look less empty?  Maybe, but I doubt it on a Wednesday night.  We'll see!

[Kuiper]

I don't usually try to keep up with the NORTH part of this thread, but this one caught my eye

Saint John's 11 - North Central (MN) 1

Saint John's scored 9 goals AFTER going down to 10 men and conceding a PK in the 13th minute!  Some teams up 2-1 in that situation would have sat back, but that's not in the new and improved Johnnie's DNA apparently.  North Central is not a good team, but they're not the worst either. They got their first win of the season their previous game 6-0 over Martin Luther.  For Saint John's, this wipes out the bad taste of a loss to Gustavus Adolphus in their last game.

[pioneer27]

Big game in the north tonight, St Olaf travels to Luther in a regional match up.  Last the year the teams played twice with a regular season draw and St Olaf getting the best of Luther 1-0 in the round of 32.   

Should finally be a great night in Decorah.  Weather in this part of the country has not been very cooperative this fall with excessive rain and storms the last couple weeks.

[Kuiper]

Another rivalry game tonight at 5:30 pm Pacific -- The Battle of the Whits

Whitworth @ Whitman

Unlike the CMS-Pomona game, these two teams are not coming on on equal footing.  They aren't right across the street either like in the 6th Street Rivalry, although they are both in Eastern Washington.  Spokane is about 2 hours and 45 minutes from Walla Walla.

Whitman is 4-1-1 and on a 3 game winning streak and a 5 game unbeaten streak

Whitworth is 2-3-1 and just came off an awful weekend, losing to Lewis & Clark (giving them their first win since 1990) and tying Linfield.

Whitworth has scored 6 and conceded 13, while Whitman has scored 9 and conceded 4.

Whitworth has only taken 7.5 shots per game, while Whitman has taken 13.5 shots per game.

Whitworth lost to Mary Hardin-Baylor 5-0, while Whitman beat Mary Hardin-Baylor 3-1

Last weekend notwithstanding, Whitworth has had some results that suggest they are better than their record.  They beat UC Santa Cruz 2-1 for example, while Whitman only tied UC Santa Cruz 0-0. 

Sometimes, these results depend to some extent on the order of games.  For example, Whitworth played Santa Cruz on Sunday, while Whitman played them on Friday, but Whitworth played Mary Hardin-Baylor on Friday, while Whitman played them on Saturday. 

Regardless, the Battle of the Whits always brings out the best in both teams.  It's been mostly Whitman recently Whitman though.  From 2001-2017, Whitworth won 27, lost 4, and tied 2.  Since 2017, Whitman has won 13, lost 3 and tied 2.

[Kuiper]

Chapman 4 - Cal Lutheran 3

This was a barnburner of a game.  Chapman was up 2-0 in the 48th minute and Cal Lu scored 3 straight goals to take a 3-2 lead in the 70th minute despite going down a man because of a red card in the 57th minute.  Chapman then scored in the 79th to tie the game and the 88th for the game-winner.  Chapman is making a habit of coming back late in games, aided in this case by the man advantage and Cal Lu tiring.  That's great, but it speaks to their passivity for long stretches in many games.  They can do that against Caltech and Cal Lu, but it won't work against some of the tougher SCIAC teams.

[Kuiper]

Tight games up and down the coast tonight

CMS 1 - Pomona-Pitzer 1

Pomona scored first and had a 1-0 lead at the half.  CMS came out flying in the second half, though, and Clayton Thomas scored a banger of a goal from the far left side of the box to the far right to tie it up.  Soon after, though, Bo Gardner went out with a second yellow card and CMS were down to 10 men for most of the second half on a tackle that led to some pushing and shoving.  Pomona had some excellent chances after that, including a header past the GK that was saved off the line by a defender, but couldn't find the game-winner in front of a pretty rowdy crowd of approximately 500, complete with vuvuzelas, that seemed to lean toward Pomona-Pitzer.

Whitman 1 - Whitworth 0

This was a tight 0-0 affair until Whitman's Kevin Serrano broke the deadlock in the 74th minute.

Occidental 1 - Whittier 1

Whittier scored the opener right before halftime and Oxy found the equalizer in the 69th minute in a defensive battle where the teams only combined for 8 shots in total.

Redlands 1 - La Verne 0

Redlands' Zach Darmanyan scored in the 52nd minute and that was all they needed

Pacific Lutheran 1 - Puget Sound 1

The teams combined for 35 shots, with 16 on goal, but they each only found the back of the next once each early in the second half.  Disappointing for PLU playing at home, which had to come from behind to salvage a tie.

Other than the Chapman-Cal Lutheran game described in an earlier post, the only exception to the tight game theme was this surprising result:

Caltech 3 - Azusa Pacific 0

Matthew Luk scored in the 2nd minute and Caltech added on 2 more after halftime to run away from a game that I expected to be closer.  Maybe the Azusa players were lulled to sleep by how quiet campus is in the afternoon when everyone is in labs

EDIT:  I just realized that Azusa also played Stanton the night before this game and there was a decent amount of squad rotation, with not a lot of overlap between the squads and thin benches for both games - so I would chalk this loss and the loss the night before as kind of scheduled losses for Azusa Pacific in a season where they know they can't qualify for the NCAA tournament and they are trying to spread around the playing time.

[Kuiper]

We don't often (ever?) get Simple Coach-to-Coach interviews with Texas schools.  Here's one with Southwestern coach Dustin Norman.

Take a listen with the coach of a program that has been quietly putting together an impressive season thus far.

[Kuiper]

This is a game worth watching.  Howard Payne just scored a goal in the 7th minute against Mary Hardin-Baylor to take a very early lead.