Your future, our focus
Northwest College freshman Ryan Bevins, who served as a goalie for the Trapper men’s soccer team last season, is moving on to a four-year university in Iowa this fall.
On Wednesday, the student-athlete from Colorado Springs officially committed to play soccer for William Penn University on a scholarship. Bevins will be looking to become the Statesmen’s starting goalkeeper.
“I think there I have a pretty good chance,” he said. “There it’s just a different level and I think I’m up to that.”
William Penn’s soccer squad is coming off a 15-5-1 campaign that saw them reach the NAIA National Championship for the first time ever; the Statesmen ended the year ranked No. 19 among the more than 200 small colleges and universities that compete in the NAIA.
However, the team’s goalie is graduating, leaving an opening for Bevins.
Bevins has known the Statemen’s coaches and players for some time and talked with William Penn officials about going to the university straight out of high school. However, because of grades, “I needed something to kind of dip my feet into college soccer,” he said.
The Trappers’ 7-8-1 season didn’t end as the team would have liked, missing the postseason, and Bevins didn’t get as much playing time as he’d hoped for. However, Bevins thinks playing collegiate soccer “still helped me in that way,” he said.
“And the training definitely helped — the staff here is amazing,” he said, adding, “As far as performance-wise this season, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more prepared for a season.”
Bevin recorded 29 saves on the year and added a rare assist in the final game of the season. He said the Trappers should field a good team next season.
As for the academic side of things, attending Northwest College has been helpful in that it “forced me to prioritize and really look at what I need to be doing as a student-athlete,” Bevins said.
At William Penn, he plans to study political science and then attend law school. Located in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the private, four-year university is similar in size to Northwest College, with around 1,200 students.