Barton's Baeza earns week nine award, fifth for Cougar defense #GoBarton

For the second consecutive week, Felipe Baeza of the Barton Community College men's soccer team has been named the KJCCC Goalkeeper of the Week. The award is the fourth of the season for the freshman from Chile in bringing the Cougar defense its fifth weekly honor for the season as reserve goalkeeper Oliver Semmle won the week two honor.

Baeza shares this week's goalkeeper award with Cloud County's Charles Albuquerque as the duo each helped protect the net in a classic scoreless double overtime draw at the Cougar Soccer Complex last Wednesday. Baeza and the defense turned back seven T-bird attacks including a pair of horizontal stops and a rejection of a 1v1 situation with seventeen minutes remaining to keep the sheet clean. Although recording just one save on Saturday at Northwest Tech, the performance was superb despite just missing the block on a late first half penalty kick as Baeza kept the score tied late in the contest with a horizontal rejection.

Now 11-0-1 since taking over the net protection duties, Baeza leads the conference with a .927 save percentage while leading a stout defensive line that has allowed just three goals in the twelve games to also lead the conference in goals against and goals against average which also ranks top three nationally in most defensive categories.

The Cougars concluded the regular season atop the Jayhawk West standings at 10-0-2 to capture the program's 9th conference title. Now No. 6 in the national polls, the 14-1-2 Cougars set their attention to post-season, beginning with Friday's 2:00 p.m. first round hosting of Johnson County Community College (9-8-1).