The Hillsdale College men’s soccer club continues to practice and press towards becoming a varsity program. Though a scrimmage with Northwood University’s top-25 ranked varsity team was cancelled, club president Christian Gajor plans to make sure that the Chargers have the chance to measure themselves against varsity teams this year.
Due to a demanding schedule of two games over one weekend and three games the next, a proposed midweek scrimmage with Northwood that would have resulted in Hillsdale playing six games in five days was postponed until next semester. Because Hillsdale athletics are preparing to move to the Great Midwest Athletic Conference in the fall of 2017, Gajor hopes to set up opportunities to scrimmage G-MAC varsity teams. He and the rest of the club want to be ready to play at a varsity level as soon as possible.
“Compared to Northwood, I think the G-MAC teams are a little more our caliber with 3,000 students instead of 15,000,” Gajor said. “So we’ll be scrimmaging them and probably one or two of the other teams in the spring and we’ll see how it goes and we can position ourselves against varsity teams.”
Gajor is a senior this year, so he is working to lay foundations that the club, and a future varsity team, can build on.
“With us switching leagues, I’m sure there’s probably going to be a push from current players that still have a few more years to see if we can turn it into a varsity program by the time that they’re juniors and seniors and in the position I am. That’s the goal,” Gajor said. “We have a bunch of good juniors that are all in leadership positions on the team, so I’m not really worried about when I step away.”
Junior Sam Grinis agreed that the team is ready to fill the gap that the loss of Gajor’s leadership will create.
“Gajor is a fantastic player and he’s a fantastic leader,” Grinis said. “We have two or three players who are juniors now, who are sophomores now, that are capable of stepping up into his shoes. If not one player, then a committee of players will easily replace him.”
Grinis sees opportunities to play higher-ranked teams and bigger schools as key to the club’s growth.
“Anytime that we can play teams that are better than us is good,” he said. “Personally I’d like to play as many G-MAC teams as we can. Any team that’s better than us, any team that’s on that high level of play that shows us where we need to go, I’m a fan of playing. How are we supposed to know how good we are supposed to be unless we play against good competition?”
For now, though, the club is focusing on getting back into stride and doing the best they can where they are. Sophomore Max Smith is confident they can pick up the pace.
“So far we’ve had some really tight games and they haven’t really gone our way,” he said. “I’m really excited for the comeback. We’re getting our game back on and we should be ready to face the more difficult teams of the season pretty soon.”
Gajor said that the whole league has improved, and with five new players, the club is ready to test themselves.
“I guess what we are most excited for is the potential of where we were last year and how we can build on that this year,” he said. “We really haven’t hit our stride yet, but once we start clicking like we were, we’re just about as good as anybody in the league. Just wait till we really start clicking and all start hitting our stride together we’ll see where we go from there—the possibilities are endless.”
Smith sees room for improvement in the team’s ability to finish on the offensive side.
“Right now we’re really good at possessing out of the back, but once we get to the final third and we’re in the dangerous place right in front of the box we can’t finish, so I think we’ll be spending the next couple practices on finishing those dangerous runs.”
The club has a home match on parent’s weekend, accompanied by an SAB barbeque, and another during homecoming weekend right before the football game.
