It felt like it had to end this way.
Three straight years of championship losses, two straight in penalty kicks. And at the end of yet another long season, the Covenant men’s soccer team found themselves in a shootout to determine the conference champion.
The pressure was immense, the parallels to the Scots’ painful past all too evident. But as the team walked off the field after the second overtime ended, an air of excitement and confidence radiated off the team. Players were smiling, some even dancing. There was no fear, no doubt, no sense of resignation. They were ready.
And as shot after shot flew past N.C. Wesleyan’s all-conference goalkeeper, as senior Henry Hooks stopped penalty after penalty, the confidence proved itself to be well-founded and well-earned. The Scots finally broke the curse that had haunted them since 2018, winning the USA South championship in dramatic style and booking a ticket to the NCAA tournament for only the second time in school history.
Now, as the dust settles from Covenant’s opening-round win over Denison University and their gut-wrenching 2-1 loss to #1 Washington & Lee in the Round of 32, the magnitude of that win can be fully appreciated. While the loss to the Generals ended both one of the longest winning streaks in Scots history and the team’s season, it proved the mettle of a team that had felt it never showed how good it had been the last few years.
Super-seniors Jake Major and Parker Owen came back for a fifth year attempting to finally break the glass ceiling that had been left untouched by the classes before them. Owen buried the first penalty of the shootout and scored the winning goal against Denison, while Major scored the lone Scots goal against the best team in the country, as well as two in the semifinal win over William Peace.
The senior class of this team had gone to the conference championship every year they had played, and they had fallen short every time. This year they went above and beyond, becoming the first Covenant soccer team to win a national tournament game and the second Covenant program to achieve that feat.
Even the players that hadn’t experienced the full weight of the drought stepped up when they had the chance. Junior Jay Patterson and sophomore Kade Theunissen drove home their penalty kicks with hardly a doubt, while huge performances from freshman Parker Rody and junior Will Kenas helped lift the Scots through their tournament games.
This tournament performance felt like a high watermark for the Covenant program’s recent history. To push the top-ranked team in the nation to the last kick of the game is no small feat, and the aforementioned win over Denison secured the team their best finish since Covenant’s move to Division III. This team will forever be noted for that progress and their efforts in the national tournament.
But nothing could top that feeling on a cold Saturday evening in Raleigh, NC, when the three years of heartbreak were exorcised in the only way they could have ever been: from the penalty spot.