COLUMBUS – The Western Nebraska Community College men's soccer team shutout out Central Community College-Columbus 3-0 in a Region IX South conference match Friday afternoon in Columbus.

                The win secures WNCC as the No. 2 seed for the upcoming Region IX playoffs, moving the Cougars to 6-2 in conference play and 9-5 overall. Central-Columbus drops to 1-4-1 in conference and 9-5-1 overall.

                WNCC ran out to a 3-0 lead at halftime and then shut down the Central-Columbus Raiders for the win.

                Ramses Athualpa opened the scoring for WNCC just 22 minutes into the match as the sophomore captain took a pass from Silvio Xavier and put the ball firmly into the back of the net.

                WNCC made it 2-0 just seven minutes later as Xavier scored off a pass from Thomas Franze for the goal.

                With two minutes left in the half, sophomore Josue Fernandez made it 3-0 with the assist credited to Vinicius Viana.

                That was all the Cougars needed as they held Central in check in the second half.

                WNCC finished with 16 shots with seven being on frame while Central 15 shots and nine on frame. Leandro Faria had 10 saves in net for the Cougars.

                While the men won on Friday, the Cougar women picked up a 2-1 win on Thursday on the road against the Fremont Select Girls Soccer Club team.

                The Cougar women received two goals from Tayna Bertini in the win to 4-7-2 on the season.

                The WNCC women will wrap up the regular season on Sunday when they host Northwest College at 11 a.m. at Landers Soccer Complex. The match is sophomore recognition for the five sophomores.

                The Cougar men will wait until early next week to see what the bracketing is for the regional tournament that begins next weekend.