NJCAA Soccer Report: Barton Faces Garden City Tonight

A tough Laramie County Community College (7-2-1) took the trip from Wyoming to Great Bend, Kansas Saturday night for a non-conference soccer game. Barton County prevailed winning 3-1, and improving their season record to 10-0 on the year. The Springfield Demize players all had a big hand in the win contributing on every goal scored in the match. James Neighbour recorded the assist on the first goal of the match giving him his team leading sixth assist on the year. Oscar Narvaez had the second assist of the match lifting a dangerous free kick into the box which was headed home. Barton’s third goal was a rebound put-back from Kyle Dubay late in the first half. Donovan Dowling recorded a couple of quality saves and was quoted in the Great Bend Tribune saying:

When you’re playing better competition, obviously they’re going to have more chances of coming through, but for the most part, my defense is so strong, and I credit all of my shutouts to them.

Dowling and the rest of the Barton defense, including fellow Demize teammate Ous Senghore have seven shutouts in ten games, and have conceded only three goals thus far. As of Tuesday, that ranked Dowling number six in the NJCAA in goals against average.

The win sets up a huge game Wednesday (tonight) with conference rival Garden City Community College. Garden is also undefeated touting a 7-0 record and a number 10 ranking in the latest NJCAA national poll. Barton came in at number 4 in the same poll. Garden has yet to defeat Barton in their four year history, which means Barton will definitely be getting their best shot, especially with Garden coming in as the underdog. The winner of the game will be the front runner to win the KJCCC conference championship and garner the number one seed for the tournament at the end of the regular season.

The way the regional system works is there are a total of 24 regions in NJCAA division 1 soccer. Each region will establish their winner, and send them on to districts to compete for one of the eight spots in the National Tournament. In Barton’s case, Kansas is their own region, consisting of the teams in the KJCCC (Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference). This means that Barton will have to go through the same teams they play in conference to win their region. The same is true for the Missouri teams as well, meaning Jefferson, St. Louis teams, Crowder, etc will all be playing each other for their respective regional title. Clearly for Barton, this means a re-match with Garden at the end of the year is likely to determine their regional champion.

NJCAA Correspondent Austin Dowling

Editor’s Note: Cody Thorn of the Neosho Daily News (and Carthage Press) provides the best soccer coverage of any newspaper in the region, and he files this report on the Crowder College Roughriders which includes a nice action shot of Bolivar’s Ryan Toombs:

Playing at home for the first time in a while — August 29 was the last day at home — the vagabond Crowder College Roughriders soccer team looked for its first home win.

That wait will have to go a while longer.

A goal by Michael Brennan in the 109th minute — in double overtime — lead Blue River Community College from Kansas City to a 1-0 win over Crowder in a Region XVI game played at Lions Field.

Crowder is now 2-5-3. Blue River improved to 4-6. The Roughriders play Friday in Union, Mo., against East Central Community College in another Region XVI game.