CARY -- As a franchise only in its fourth year of existence, the Carolina RailHawks are long on hope and short on history and tradition. They have the opportunity this week to help bulk up on the latter.
Despite two previous trips to the playoffs, the RailHawks' next playoff win will be their first. Their next playoff goal will be their first. And with the franchise's first regular-season title in hand - the championship of the NASL Conference of U.S. Soccer's D2 Pro League, secured with a home win Friday - the RailHawks are eager to make a little more history.
"Most of the guys here haven't won a championship," said midfielder Josh Gardner, the team's MVP. "They're hungry for it. We've taken care of the NASL already, and now it's on to the postseason. Everybody's up for it."
There's some additional incentive to win it all, with this being the one and only season of the awkwardly named D2 Pro League - an umbrella organization created to house, for one season, the pre-existing USL and nascent NASL, the latter including the RailHawks.
Next season, the two leagues are likely to go their separate ways, which means this may be the last chance for anyone to win a championship of a unified division.
"We talked a little bit already about the NASL, that this was the first-ever year of the NASL and we could be the first-ever winners, and that's not ever going to happen again," RailHawks coach Martin Rennie. "That was one thing we talked about. And now that we're going into the playoffs, this might be the only season that we will have a unified division run by U.S. Soccer. We can be the guys who go and win it. We've got a real chance."
The RailHawks open the first round at the NSC Minnesota Stars on Wednesday, with the return leg at WakeMed Soccer Park on Saturday. There are any number of reasons this is the RailHawks' best chance yet for a solid showing in the postseason. Most notably, the team is playing some of its best soccer right now, including a resounding home win over the Austin Aztex on Saturday that not only sent a message to another would-be contender but helped cost the Aztex the USL Conference title.
Now, they will face Minnesota, a team that beat them twice in the regular season, but a far easier trip than last year's first-round series against the Vancouver Whitecaps. The RailHawks earned the right to host the second leg of that matchup, but that meant two coast-to-coast flights while Vancouver only had to make one, jet-lagging the RailHawks right out of the playoffs.
Even the circumstances of the losses to Minnesota were odd - the first loss reflected Carolina's complacency after a relatively easy win to open the season; the second was marred by a pair of ejections. Rennie is more than willing to throw those games out the window.
In terms of making history, it won't take much.
In their inaugural season in 2007, the RailHawks lost to the eventual champion Seattle Sounders in the first round.
Last year, Vancouver knocked them out.
Gardner, who took care of the RailHawks with Seattle in 2007, knows what it takes to do it.
"All year long, we've played pretty well," Gardner said. "We've been unlucky, or we might have been able to win the conference title earlier. We've overcome adversity and we have great talent. We're all looking forward to this."
