College soccer season begins in the sweltering heat of August, when water breaks are often required, and Krenzler Field spectators struggle to focus on matches with the relentless sun looming a still-too-close 93 million miles behind the Cleveland skyline.
That’s quite the contrast with what Cleveland State’s men’s team experienced during its Monday morning practice, a stock November 3rd in Northeast Ohio: blustery mid-40s conditions, under an overcast sky. By the end of the 90-minute session, a light drizzle added some extra hustle to the pitch cleanup efforts.
The shifting weather is just one of several markers of late-season urgency, as results are magnified and failure is often fatal.
“As soon as you start getting to late October, early November the weather changes and it’s around that time,” CSU head coach Sinisa Ubiparipovic said. “So the one thing, you got to make sure that you are competing for something during that period and then once you put yourself in that spot that you’re ready to continue competing and trying to get results.”
Luckily for the Vikings, they’ve proven quite adept at handling late conditions. The most recent evidence arrived on Friday, when Daniel Celso’s goal with just 25 seconds remaining clinched a 2-1 victory at IU Indianapolis, and with it, the fifth conference regular season title in program history.
It was the third time during the team’s current 12-match unbeaten streak that the green and white altered a result in the final 61 seconds.
On September 20th, Lennart Heck was the hero of a victory over Oakland, tallying the contest’s only score off of a cross from Josip Rimac with 88:59 showing on the clock. Three weeks later, Heck assisted Tom Mertz on a last-second goal – quite literally – as the Vikings stole a crucial 1-1 draw at Robert Morris to keep the run alive.
A win over Wright State and a tie with Mercyhurst weren’t quite as dramatic, though Cleveland State did fire home decisive goals with roughly ten minutes remaining in each case.
“It’s a 90-minute game and you’ve got to play every second of it and you’ll give yourself a chance,” Ubiparipovic said, while standing beneath a championship banner with a freshly-pressed “2025” on it.
“Do you need to have luck on your side here and there? Absolutely. But I feel like no team has ever won something, a title or even if you’re at the professional level, looking at the World Cup and different things, I think they all had some luck along the way, so it’s definitely a good sign and we’re not planning on that. It just sort of happens.”
That significant helping of luck, and the mental toughness that helps produce it, has placed the Vikings in an extremely enviable position. The Horizon League’s top seed is already locked in, thanks to CSU’s 5-0-3 conference mark. On Tuesday, the team will host Green Bay in a match without stakes to close the regular season.
“I think the biggest thing is for our guys is to stay sharp, stay fit, get good reps and challenge ourselves,” Ubiparipovic said of that clash with the Phoenix. “Can we be the best version of ourselves tomorrow? And then, after the game is done, then we will worry about the playoffs.”
Outside of Cleveland State’s position, much has yet to be decided with respect to those playoffs. Tuesday will witness the resolution of an airtight race in the conference standings, with second place Purdue Fort Wayne and sixth-place Robert Morris separated by just three points. The Mastodons and Colonials, along with Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Oakland are the most-likely hopefuls to fill out the six-team HL tournament bracket.
The championship quarterfinals, involving the third through sixth-place finishers, will take place on Sunday. After that, Cleveland State will host the lowest-remaining seed in one of two semifinals on November 12th.
The early forecast for next Wednesday? A high of 49 degrees, winds up to 25 miles per hour, and a 21 percent chance of rain.
In short, it will probably be a miserable day, but that’s how Ubiparipovic knows he’s exactly where he needs to be. In fact, he hopes the Vikings will play in even worse weather eventually.
“We know we are heading in the right direction,” the coach said. “I think the program is in a good spot and I think we just need to continue building it and continue improving. I don’t think we’re satisfied where we are.”
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