Sunnyside\u2019s Kevin Hernandez recalled feeling some surprise when Washington coaches called on him to come off the bench late in the first half of Monday\u2019s men\u2019s soccer national championship.<\/p>\n
About four minutes later, Washington scored the game\u2019s first goal and Hernandez stayed on the field until a Harrison Bertos goal gave the Huskies a 3-2 win over North Carolina State and their first title in program history. Coaches clearly liked what they saw from the Huskies\u2019 freshman, who embraced his role as a box-to-box central midfielder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just said to go in there and play my game and just let the soccer come to me,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cThey basically just said do the hard work and the easy work will come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regular competition at practice against the Huskies\u2019 talented veteran midfield prepared Hernandez for his opportunity, so he didn\u2019t feel nervous when injuries opened up at opportunity in a 1-0 second-round win at No. 5 SMU. He played the final 32 minutes of his first game in nearly a month and earned another 52 minutes in Washington\u2019s 3-1 win at No. 4 Maryland.<\/p>\n
Hernandez said being an unseeded at-large selection put a chip on Washington\u2019s shoulder, since the team always believed it could beat anyone. Four straight road wins to reach the Final Four in Cary, N.C. prepared the Huskies for what Hernandez said felt like a road environment in the championship game, just a short drive from NCSU\u2019s campus in Raleigh, N.C.<\/p>\n
Washington lost a 2-0 lead, and replay review forced the Huskies to pause their game-winning celebration. They even had to hand the trophy back to a tournament official as the referee checked for a possible offside before finally confirming the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI low-key was scared,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cI was like no way this was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
He struggled to explain the feeling of winning a second national championship in less than six months. Fellow Washington freshman Zack Meier, Clarens Dollin, Kenny Pierpoint all played together on the Crossfire team that won the Elite Club National League U19 title after Hernandez scored a goal and delivered an assist in the final match.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2025 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.). Visit www.yakima-herald.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n Copyright 2025 Tribune Content Agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunnyside\u2019s Kevin Hernandez recalled feeling some surprise when Washington coaches called on him to come off the bench…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82,153561],"class_list":["post-354595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-university_of_washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}