Wheaton, Ill. - The Thunder men's soccer punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament on Saturday night with a 5-2 victory over the Elmhurst Bluejays to win the CCIW Tournament Championship. With the win, Wheaton earns the CCIW's automatic qualifying bid to the postseason for the third consecutive season. Wheaton has now swept the CCIW's regular season and tournament title for the three consecutive seasons. Wheaton improves to 18-3 with the win and will wait until the NCAA unveils the brackets at noon on Monday to find out its postseason draw. Elmhurst falls to 11-5-4 with the loss.

Wheaton out shot the Bluejays 23-8 on the night with a 12-3 edge in shots on goal. Wheaton had five corner kick opportunities to just two for the Bluejays. Matt Paprocki made one save and allowed two goals for the Thunder. Elmhurst's Josh Reglin allowed two goals on two shots in 17 minutes in net for the Bluejays before he was replaced by Nick King. King made seven saves and allowed three goals over the final 73 minutes.

The Bluejays struck first early in Saturday night's match as Andrew Moore beat the Thunder offside trap and found Josh Rudd at the top of the 18-yard box for Rudd's fourth goal of the season to put Elmhurst ahead 1-0 just 10 minutes and three seconds into the match. Wheaton quickly surged back, needing just 97 seconds to find an equalizer as Jon Clark found Stephen Golz (PICTURED RIGHT) in the box and Golz ripped a shot past Reglin to tie the game at the 11:40 mark. Four minutes later a Noah Anthony corner kick landed beautifully on the head of Golz who placed the ball back inside the far post to give Wheaton the 2-1 lead. The goal was Golz' 15th of the season, marking the second consecutive year that he has hit the 15-goal plateau.

Play continued to flow wildly up and down the pitch with a frenetic pace for much of the half until late in the half it looked as though the Thunder had found some breathing room. Using a set-piece just across the midfield line, Anthony curled a free kick perfectly into the box to hit a running Elliot Borge (PICTURED LEFT), who flicked a pass to Marshall Hollingsworth in front of the net and Hollinsworth easily finished from nine yards out to give Wheaton a 3-1 lead just 63 seconds before halftime. The Bluejays came right back and took advantage of a Thunder defensive mistake. Pushing for a goal before halftime, the Bluejays sent the ball into the box from the left wing, bringing Paprocki off his line to parry the ball away. Colliding in traffic in the box, Paprocki's clearing punch landed with Michael DeLong just outside the 18-yard box and DeLong finished for his sixth goal of the season 18 seconds ahead of the halftime horn go cut the Wheaton lead to 3-2 at halftime.

Seven minutes into the second half, Wheaton finally found some insurance. Playing into the box from the left side Max Carey found Stephen Golz in the middle of the 18-yard box and Golz quickly swung to Adam Blackman on the right side of the box for a hard right-footed shot and a 4-2 lead at the 52:18 mark. The Thunder continued pushing forward and several nice saves by King as well as a rocket shot by Jordan Golz that hit the crossbar, kept the goal differential at two. However, a magnificant individual play by Elliot Borge in the 70th minute led to a dazzling goal to give Wheaton a 5-2 lead that would prove to be the final total.