By Drew Casey
If you look at an athletic schedule, the end is near for many fall sports at Fordham.
But “near” is a relative term when it comes to the end, especially this season. Fordham Women’s Soccer, Men’s Soccer, Football and Water Polo began their seasons in late-August or early-September and are looking to continue their season past their final regular season games.
The first team of the year that will look to extend its end date will be the women’s soccer program when it takes part in the Atlantic 10 Championship in Davidson, North Carolina this week. Led by graduate student Jessica Widmann, redshirt-senior Kristina Maksuti and a talented defensive core, the team finished the regular season 12-6-1 and will play VCU on Thursday at 1:30 p.m in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament. Under second-year head coach Jessica Clinton, the team will be making its first appearance in the postseason tournament since 2009.
Men’s Soccer looks to defend its Atlantic 10 title next week, when the tournament commences in Fairfax, Virginia. The Rams, as the sixth team to qualify last season, know that they can make a run again this year behind the offensive success of the Loebe brothers. The team is currently 6-6-4 overall and 4-2-1 in the Atlantic 10 with one regular season match remaining. Fordham’s seeding will depend on the league’s remaining games as the squad can finish anywhere between second and seventh.
It looked like Fordham Football would be able to move through the Patriot League with relative ease and grab the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAA FCS Championship. However, with a heartbreaking 31-29 loss to Colgate over the weekend, that is no longer the case. In order to get an automatic postseason berth, the team will likely need to win its final two regular season games and get some help from around the Patriot League in the conference’s final three weeks of play. If Fordham does not finish first in the seven-team Patriot League, it is questionable as to whether Fordham will receive one of 13 at-large berths into the postseason.
As for Fordham Water Polo, the team looks to advance through this weekend’s CWPA Northern Division Championship into the 2015 CWPA Championship. The Rams enter the tournament, held at Brown, as the fourth seed of seven teams. The team will need to finish in the top three at this weekend’s competition or count on one of four at-large bids to advance to the overall conference championship. The squad enters play at 16-13 and 5-7 in the CWPA and has a definite opportunity to advance.
While the end is near for some, it is a long way off for others as Fordham basketball kicks off in the “near” future. The Jeff Neubauer era begins on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the University of Texas at Arlington, while Women’s Basketball plays its first game of the season on Sunday, Nov. 15, at Penn State.
It is a good time to be a Ram.
