The Western Nebraska Community College and Southeast Community College men's soccer teams had to not only battle each other on the pitch Monday at Landers Soccer Complex, but they had to battle the hot temperatures as well that hit 98 degrees at one time.
The hot temperatures, however, didn't affect the intensity on the field as the two teams settled for a 2-2 tie in each team's second match of the season.
WNCC head coach Todd Rasnic said it was a contest that showed what the Cougars need to improve on to continue on their season.
"We got a tie today and I won't fault them for that and I thought it was great that we came back and tied the game," Rasnic said. "But, the truth is, we shouldn't have been in that position to begin with. We let pressure dedicate how we play and good teams don't do that. We have a lot of work to do to learn to play under game pressure and we will have to keep working to see how it goes this weekend."
The Cougars battled on the field by so did the Storm as neither team got a lot of shots off. Rasnic said this team has plenty of talent, but they are quite on the same page yet.
"We have a lot of work to do and we are nowhere where we need to be with the talent level that we have," Rasnic said. "Our guys need to learn to play in this conference. We have a lot of freshmen and a lot of young guys and they don't understand the intensity level. My job is to get a fire lit under them and try to get them up to the right speed to play. Talent-wise we are fine. But talent doesn't always win the game when the guys won't work."
Southeast got the first goal and it took less than two minutes into match as the Storm went up 1-0. Southeast had a chance to go up 2-0 but a free kick went high.
It was soon after that that Cougars got the tying score as Maxime Niyibaho tied things up after he took a pass from Adolfo Rojas for the goal.
Five minutes later, the match was untied as Southeast scored again with 12 minutes to play in the half. That is where the match stood at halftime.
The second half was a battle between both teams as neither team was going to give an inch. WNCC, with 24:59 to play in the contest, tied the match when Cougar goalkeeper Hernan Burdiles delivered the ball upfield and Pablo Dominguez headed the ball into the net.
Both teams had chances in the final 20 minutes but the shots would just go high or wide.
WNCC managed five shots in the contest while Southeast had six. WNCC won the corner kick battle 4-2.
WNCC will be back in action Saturday when the two teams head to Rapid City, South Dakota, for scrimmage matches against RMAC 4-year teams. After that, the two teams will head to Casper, Wyoming, for a contest on September 2 against Casper College and facing Central Wyoming College on September 4.