WEST POINT — The Point University men’s soccer team might be the best kept athletic secret in the Greater Valley Area.

After tying with Middle Georgia State University on opening night, the Skyhawks have now won nine matches in a row.

“We’re playing about how I thought we could,” Point University head men’s soccer coach Jonathan Lenarz said. “I think the thing that’s been the key and maybe even a little surprising to me is our consistency. Soccer’s really a game of momentum, you can’t control it because a coach can’t call a timeout. There’s just very little control on how things are going momentum-wise once the game is going, and we’ve had very few times where the game is going poorly. We’ve been very consistent.”

Last week, Point defeated Bryan College and RV Tennessee Wesleyan led by sophomore forward Juan Gomez. The sophomore scored three goals and contributed one assist in the pair of matches, which earned him the title of being named the conference player of the week on Monday afternoon.

Gomez has now scored 10 goals in the team’s first 10 games this season. He also has seven assists on the year.

“His production in terms of setting up goals is a little bit more than we expected, and he’s a real goal-scoring machine,” Lenarz said. “He was not given his fair due last year with conference awards, in my opinion, based on the year he had as a freshman. I’m glad that he’s motivated, is scoring a bunch of conference goals and I don’t expect that to change. He is a really solid player.”

The winning streak already places Point above the 8-10-1 overall record the Skyhawks finished with last season. Point was picked to finish 10th out of the 11 conference teams in the preseason poll. The goal for Lenarz was to place better than the middle of the pack in order to host a playoff game.

Point is currently second in the conference standings below No. 14 Reinhardt with seven games remaining in the regular season. Due to weather conditions earlier in the season, the Skyhawks face a tough 48-hour turnaround on the road against Union College in Kentucky and Columbia International University in South Carolina this upcoming Thursday and Saturday.

After the traveling weekend, Point returns home to face in-state rival Truett-McConnell University on Oct. 16 at 4 p.m. in River Bowl Stadium.

Lenarz said that he hopes the community comes out to support the program during the final stretch of the year.

“We need more support, to be frank,” he said. “Most games, we start 11 international players, their families don’t live here. We’ve got a top-30 team in the country and the NAIA is strong, at least as good as D-II. It’s kind of sad when we don’t have any come out to watch our games because we don’t have parents to come and do it. If people are sports or soccer people and want to see really a strong, athletic showing, come out and watch a Point soccer game.”