Column: The championship window is closing fast for men's soccer

S aturday, before the North Carolina men’s soccer team played Virginia in its final regular season game of the season, Coach Carlos Somoano watched as his seniors were honored.

He watched each of his players walk across the edge of Fetzer Field and listened to their names blast out of the speakers. And for each player, he wondered: “What are we gonna do without this guy?”

And rightfully so.

The team that Somoano has assembled is ripe for a National Championship run, and after this season, the entire core of that team — a team unbeaten in its last eight games — will be gone.

Gone will be senior captain Boyd Okwuonu, who’s started every single game he’s played for the Tar Heels on the back line.

Gone will be senior goalkeeper Brendan Moore, who went 659 straight minutes without letting in a goal before an unfortunate deflection in Saturday’s game.

Gone will be the entire line of forwards that started the game on senior night: Andy Craven, who’s leading the team with 11 goals; Rob Lovejoy, who’s leading the team with eight assists; and Tyler Engel, who carried the offense in 2013 in the absence of Lovejoy and Craven, and is tied for second on the team with five goals this season.

And that’s only the first five.

The list of departing seniors also includes Verneri Valimaa (five goals with Engel) and C.J. Odenigwe, who started five games earlier in the season when UNC was trying to figure out its back line.

“They are awesome,” Somoano said. “They are so committed to our program and they mean so much.”

This isn’t to say that the Tar Heels will be bad after this season — they have talented players like freshman Alan Winn and redshirt senior Jordan McCrary returning for 2015 — but to emphasize how good this core of players actually is.

And the players know it.

“To be honest, I think we have max potential,” Okwuonu said after the 1-1 tie to the Cavaliers. “I think we can succeed on so many levels, especially ACC and National Championship.”

The Tar Heels certainly are talented enough to go the distance. They have depth, one of the best forwards in the country and the reigning ACC defender of the year.

They won’t have any of that next year.