GREEN BAY — The UW-Green Bay men's soccer team is going dancing for the first time since 2009.
The Phoenix locked up an automatic bid when they beat Oakland this past weekend in the Horizon League tournament, their first win at Oakland since 1978.
“It wasn’t easy,” said UWGB senior defender Hesron Barry. “Oakland is a very good team, very good coach, very good players as well. We stuck to the coaches instruction, we just played with our hearts, mind and body. We did it.”
Thanks to that, the Phoenix didn't have to sweat out wondering if they would make the tournament. On Monday afternoon, they found out who their opponent would be.
“This is what it’s all about,” said UWGB associate head coach John O’Reilly. “This is why you put in all those long hours as a coach, a player. This is the reason you do it is to win a championship and get into the NCAA tournament.”
The Phoenix are heading to Kalamazoo to take on Western Michigan at noon Thursday.
“We’ll celebrate a little bit and we already practiced this morning, so we don’t practice today. So tomorrow morning we’ll get back to work and we’ll literally start working on what we need to do tomorrow and Wednesday for what we need to do on Thursday,” O’Reilly said.
The winner of Thursday's match up will take on No. 15 Duke.
