UW men’s soccer team brings home first-ever national title
Winning six tournament games on the road from coast to coast earned the overlooked Huskies men’s soccer team its first national title ever.
UW men’s soccer coach Jamie Clark led the never-say-die Huskies to their second College Cup since 2021. Despite losing their final three regular-season games, the boys in purple rallied with six consecutive road playoff wins to stand atop the college soccer world.
It was a cloudy, wet, yucky day in Seattle when the bus carrying the UW men’s soccer team pulled into Husky Stadium. But there was no gloom anywhere to be found because less than 24 hours earlier, the Huskies captured their first-ever national championship with a 3-2 overtime victory over No. 16 North Carolina State in Cary, N.C.
Both T-Mobile Park and Lumen Field were festooned in purple lights to express the glee with their Emerald City mates who surprised most everyone nationwide with their success on the pitch.
This championship—won by defender Harrison Bertos’ winning goal at 1:54 of overtime—was by no means a gimme. Then again, not much was during the regular Big Ten season. The Huskies stumbled at the end, losing their last three regular-season games, and were not seeded when the playoffs began. That left them with a daunting task: needing to win six playoff tournament games on the road against higher-seeded opponents. Despite flying nearly 10,000 miles from coast to coast in the postseason and being away from home for 21 days since Nov. 18, they pulled that off.
Washington finished off an incredible postseason in December by taking down NC State 3-2 in overtime to secure the first national title in program history.
In order, the Huskies won at Oregon State, then went to Dallas and knocked off No. 5 SMU. That was followed by a victory at No. 12 Stanford, and a cross-country flight to eliminate No. 4 Maryland. That victory earned the upstarts a berth in the College Cup semifinals, where they defeated No. 16 Furman of Greenville, S.C., for a spot in the national championship final against North Carolina State, which enjoyed a huge home-field advantage and a raucous, partisan record crowd of 10,316 cheering them on.
“I thought they were the best team in the country,” Husky coach Jamie Clark said of North Carolina State. “They pushed us right to the limit.”
The Huskies shot out to a 2-0 lead, but the Wolfpack rallied with two late goals to equalize the score, meaning it was on to overtime. Once again, no problem. “Going into overtime,” Clark says, “instead of hanging their heads, they knew there was one moment left to win and they executed.
“I’m proud, excited, and while it may not sound like it, I’m speechless.”