CMU Men’s Soccer preps for road trip following a top 10 win

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX) – Colorado Mesa is working to stay hot against Colorado School of Mines on Sunday.

The Mavs are coming off a 2-0 weekend, with a signature win against Fort Lewis College. The Skyhawks were ranked ninth in the nation before arriving in Grand Junction where they were met by a Mavs team that was chomping at the bit.

“After tying against two of the top 10 teams in the nation, it made us think that we were ready to beat someone,” midfielder Cain Castellon said. “We’ve worked so hard to get to where we were and we kept the same momentum in both games. We got the results we wanted this week.”

After a scoreless first half, CMU started hot with two goals in the first three minutes of the second half on its way to a 4-1 win.

“It’s a day-by-day task,” Jonah Elstad, a CMU defender said. “My mom always told me, ‘How do you eat an elephant?’ one bite at a time.”

The season had not been only smooth sailing.

“I think ever since we lost to South Dakota everything changed,” Castellon said. “It was a wakeup call to get everything together and try to make the RMAC playoffs because we don’t want to sit out again this year.”

The team made some changes prior to the weekend series.

“We were playing together right off the bat, in previous games that might have been one of our weaknesses, starting games off a little slow,” freshman Kamden Kooiman said. “We’ve proved that we can start games pretty strong and continuing that to the end of the game. It’s going to work well for us.”

The changes were not only physical.

“Coach has been really good at instilling a different mindset in all of us lately because pre-season wasn’t super strong. We realized we needed to work harder,” Kooiman said. “Everybody’s been having the same mindset of constantly improving. Every practice we improve. Every game we’ve learned something. We just keep getting better.”

Elstad said this is the bar for the future.

“I think Fort Lewis is the new standard. I think how we played against them, how we worked as a team, how we functioned, how we played together and moved as a unit, that’s a new standard for us,” he said. “I mean, beating a ninth ranked team in the nation, beating them 4-1 at home, that’s a high standard.”

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