ROCK ISLAND, Ill. – The Carthage College Red Men completed a perfect College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin season Saturday afternoon with a 4-1 win at Augustana College to claim the outright regular season title.
 
"We have gone undefeated in the league before and won conference championships," said head men's soccer coach Steve Domin, "but this one feels good because of the amount of work and traveling we have done with such a young group.  Tournament and regular season Championships take great talent, some luck and a huge sense of want…This group has time and time again come back from the many doubters, deficits, adversity, and each day someone else picks us up.  I wish everyone could feel the way we do.  This year was for all the past players, our player's families and each person right down to our many reserve players working hard to fill roles in the future."
 
The #11 Red Men finished the conference season at 8-0 in the CCIW and 16-3 on the year, while ending the Vikings' season at 4-13-1 and 0-7-1 in the CCIW.
 
Johnny Rimkus and Austin Bitta each tallied a pair of goals and an assist in the game to finish with five points each.
 
Carthage fell behind early as Michael Peters scored on a one-timer just 12 minutes into the game off a set-piece play.
 
Carthage answer with a pair of goal in the 19th minute from Johnny Rimkus off a volley, and by Austin Bitta just 12-seconds later on a give-and-go from Alberto Eloyza to give the Red Men the eventual game-winner.
 
The second half saw the Red Men add on with Rimkus's second goal coming in the 46th minute from Bitta and then returning the favor by assisting Bitta on his second goal in the 55th minute.
 
"Johnny and Austin had great games today," said the head coach.  "But everyone forgets about Adrian Herrera who is arguably one of the best players in D3 soccer, but because he doesn't have a stats line at his position, may sometimes be overlooked by outsiders."
 
With the regular season title the Red Men have also clinched the number-one seed in the upcoming College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Men's Soccer Tournament.  Carthage will have home field advantage throughout the tournament with the Red Men playing host to the number-four seed which is still to be determined.  The game is scheduled to be played Wednesday, November 2nd at Art Keller Field.  A game time has not yet been announced.
 
"We will feel good about this for a day and then we get back to work next week.  This starts to get really fun now"