Chris Willig Sports Reporter The men’s soccer team, fresh off consecutive wins, begins a tough series of games tonight. The Falcons, who are currently .500 in both regular season and conference games, travel to Cleveland State to take on the Vikings. The Falcons are coming into tonight’s game extremely optimistic, and are ready to take on the daunting task of three tough matches in six days. The team, which has had only three days of rest since their win against Northern Illinois, is also scheduled to play matches on Sunday and Tuesday. Falcon coach Mel Mahler said he knows the importance and difficulty a long stretch of games can have on a young team. “The next two weeks are extremely difficult, we have five matches, but I think the two wins last weekend got us on the right track,” Mahler said. “These two weeks are also really crucial. I think it is going to be a real test of our character and our ability to overcome fatigue …” As intimidating as the next few weeks are for the Falcons, they realize they have to take it one game at a time. The road game on Thursday matches the Falcons up against a Cleveland State team that is hungry for a win. The Vikings have lost their last five games and are most recently coming off a 6-0 loss to Notre Dame. “Cleveland State is a good team,” Mahler said. “They are coming off some losses and we really don’t know what to expect or what kind of mindset they will be in. We just need to go in there and take care of business.”

Following tonight’s game the Falcons head home to host Birmingham Southern on Sunday.

The Panthers currently have seven wins and just ended their five-game winning streak with a loss to Winthrop. Birmingham Southern has also been a threat offensively this season. The Panthers have scored 13 goals in their last five games while only allowing half as many.

If the Falcons want to continue their success this weekend they have to continue to execute. “We need to be consistent,” Mahler said. “Consistent defensively and we need to clean things up in the back. We can not allow teams to have quality scoring chances, which we have allowed teams to do in the past four or five games. We have to also find a way to score more goals, but we are creating more chances which is always crucial.”

However tough the weekend may be for the Falcons, their test will not stop there. The Falcons are scheduled to host and extremely talented Oakland team on Tuesday.

This stretch of games for the Falcons could be their biggest test of the year. However, the Falcons are optimistic and ready to take on the task as well as the rest of the season.

“We feel good about our chances,” Mahler said. “Our goal, quite frankly, is to go undefeated for the rest of the way.”