{"id":517,"date":"2018-11-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.northcentral.edu\/blog\/mens-soccer-team-wins-nccaa-national-soccer-championship\/"},"modified":"2021-04-18T19:14:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-18T19:14:36","slug":"mens-soccer-team-wins-nccaa-national-soccer-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northcentral.edu\/blog\/mens-soccer-team-wins-nccaa-national-soccer-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Men&#8217;s Soccer Team Wins NCCAA National Soccer Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The North Central\u2019s men\u2019s soccer team put an exclamation point at the end of their season on Saturday night as they sailed to a 3-0 victory over Kentucky Christian University to clinch the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) national championship. The win represents the Rams&#8217; first NCCAA Men&#8217;s Soccer National Championship in school history.<\/p>\n<p>North Central University entered the final game of their 2018 season looking to make program history as they had their eyes set on their first NCCAA National Championship. The Rams continued to rely on their defense throughout much of the first period as they struggled to find many scoring opportunities to start. NCU was finally able to find some separation in the 27th minute as\u00a0<dfn><a href=\"https:\/\/ncurams.com\/roster.aspx?rp_id=483\" rev=\"483\">Riley Loukinen<\/a><\/dfn>, gave the Rams the lead with a beautiful shot that was able to find the back of the net. The Rams had the Knights on their heels struggling to find an answer to their defensive effort, sending the Rams to the break leading 1-0. The second half was much of the same for the Rams as they continued to stifle the Knight&#8217;s offense. <dfn><a href=\"https:\/\/ncurams.com\/roster.aspx?rp_id=491\" rev=\"491\">Kaleb Smith<\/a><\/dfn> added another Ram&#8217;s goal in the 61st minute to stretch the lead and place NCU in the driver&#8217;s seat. Kentucky Christian threatened late in the period, but North Central kept the Knights scoreless in the waning minutes of the second half, adding one more goal on a\u00a0<dfn><a href=\"https:\/\/ncurams.com\/roster.aspx?rp_id=487\" rel=\"smarttag\" rev=\"487\">Henry Puchuela<\/a><\/dfn>\u00a0direct kick in\u00a0the 87th minute\u00a0as the Rams\u00a0cruised to a 3-0 championship victory.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ncurams.com\/news\/2018\/11\/17\/mens-soccer-claims-nccaa-national-championship-crown.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><button type=\"button\">Read the full story on ncurams.com<\/button><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>North Central\u2019s men\u2019s soccer team put an exclamation point at the end of their season on Saturday night as they sailed to a 3-0 victory over Kentucky Christian University to clinch the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) national championship. The win represents the Rams&#8217; first NCCAA Men&#8217;s Soccer National Championship in school history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,50,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-friends","category-athletics","category-ncu-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>NCU Men&#039;s Soccer NCCAA Nat. 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