SEWARD, Neb. – No. 3 seed Concordia University, Nebraska Men’s Soccer reigns as the 2025 GPAC tournament champions. After starting the season 2-6, the remarkably uncommon Bulldogs finish with a 2-1 triumph over No. 4 seed Morningside to take the conference playoff title for the third time in the program’s history. With the win, CUNE claimed the lone NAIA automatic bid for the GPAC after three wins in the single-elimination tournament.
Head Coach Jason Weides has won three tournament finals including 2015, 2022, and 2025. The Bulldogs now have a 12-8 overall record and are on a six-match win streak.
“Its amazing,” Coach Weides said. “Its really fun to see the joy in the team and ultimately, we sacrificed a lot right. This has been a unique season, starting off not great for us. Well below our expectations. We were 2-6 and really turned it around. It’s a testament to these guys staying resolute, staying on the path we wanted to go and believing internally. Players didn’t believe outside of our group. But these guys just continued to work and put their trust in the team. It’s fun to see them get to celebrate that.”
With less than 12 minutes remaining, Ricards Busmeisters poked possession away from the visitors to Hugo Garrote, who passed through to Oliver Benson. The Bennington, Neb., native drove the cross to Busmeisters and sent a banger into the top near corner, leaving the Morningside goalkeeper no chance for a save.
In the 21st minute, a chipped ball from Ricards Busmeisters led to a one-v-one race as Cleme Suarez, with his defender on his right, tapped the potential score ahead, switching positions in the sprint. Suarez looked up with open space and struck a low rolling cross to Oliver Benson, who buried the one-touch just below the crossbar.
“It is a big deal,” Benson said. “It is great for the program. We pushed through and all stepped up to do our job today. It was resilience from every player and the coaching staff to help kind of enforce that on us. Make sure we kept up our heads, even though it was a good learning experience at the beginning of the season. Worked out a couple of kinks to make our team better, we excelled then today.”
Concordia played with 10 men behind the ball trying to neutralize an offense that had scored 45 goals coming into tonight’s matchup. The back line was almost like a stone wall with nothing on goal for the first 70 minutes with big time headers from Mike Wyvill and Adrian Wambua that silenced any center attack for a majority of the 90 minutes. Chavarria had one save and the win adding to his record.
Slade Leicht used his speed to keep the Mustangs off the ball as Garrote and Oliver Balazs continued to help maintain possession. Nineteen players made an impact to win the championship, including Milo Hegarty, Kai Olbrich, Joe McCarroll, Sam Hamilton, Niko Nareike, Karlo Rodriguez, Jasper Hofland, Mattis Hollnagel, Connor Robbins and Sean Stratman.
In their first shot on goal, the Mustangs swung a cross as Concordia keeper Inigo Chavarria blocked it out to the feet of Bennet Buchwald with a virtually empty net to equalize in the 71st minute. Morningside ends its season at 12-7-2.
Concordia (11-8) will wait for Friday (Nov. 14) as the NAIA will announce the qualifiers for the national tournament in the selection show at 5 p.m. CT.