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Rangers’ Rise Matches That of Didic

By NICHOLAS MURRAY - nicholas.murray@uslsoccer.com, 10/22/16, 8:18PM EDT

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Swope Park aiming to cap second-half surge with first USL Cup on Sunday


Photo courtesy Nick Tre. Smith / Swope Park Rangers

WHIPPANY, N.J. – In a certain way, the rise of the Swope Park Rangers has mirrored the path of the side’s Defensive Player of the Year, Amer Didic.

For the Rangers, the final three months proved transformative, as the club finished the regular season on a 9-3-4 run from the start of July to earn not only a place in the 2016 USL Cup Playoffs, but the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference.

For Didic, this time last year, he wasn’t even sure he’s be playing professionally after finishing his college career at Baker University, an NAIA school an hour outside Kansas City. Now, he’s become a key figure for the West’s representative in Sunday night’s 2016 USL Cup Final, Presented by Nike, against the New York Red Bulls II.

“I talked about it with our coaches just recently, but just a year ago when I was playing college at Baker, I would never have thought,” Didic said as the team finished its preparations on Saturday afternoon. “I didn’t even know if I would be playing professionally or not at the end of the season. The season came, I earned my spot, started winning games, and now we’re in the USL Cup.”

On Sunday night, Didic and the Rangers’ defense will get arguably their biggest test of the season against a Red Bulls II attack that set a USL record with 61 goals in the regular season, and has notched eight tallies in its run to the Cup Final at Red Bull Arena (8 p.m. ET | ESPNU). As well as the side has played of late, conceding only once in the postseason, while also recording shutouts in three of its last four regular season games, Didic is confident the side can withstand what the hosts have to offer.

“I think there’s nothing that we should change in terms of defense,” Didic said. “We’ve been playing solid, our back line, our defense as a whole, so really as long as we stick to what we’ve been doing, I think we’ll be successful.”

While Didic and his teammates on the back line have held down the fort defensively, the versatility of the Rangers’ attacking group has posed problems for opponents as well. At the center of that has been leading scorer Mark Anthony Gonzalez, who has acted as the main striker for the side, and also played on the wing and as the advanced player in the Rangers’ midfield triangle, where he was performed well as a creator as well as a scorer.

With the side’s early-season struggles for result, and with injuries, Gonzalez is proud of the way the side found ways to thrive, and improve, through the adversity it faced early on.

“I think we had 40 players who had played for us [in the regular season],” Gonzalez said. “Based on how we started it shows a lot of character in how we progressed. It’s great to be able to make it this far.”

After getting to be the favorite each of the past three weeks, the Rangers appear to also be relishing the chance to be underdogs one more time. After lifting the Western Conference Championship a week ago, the side is definitely hungry for more.

“We had a taste last week, which was something special, it felt really good, but we knew that there was one more game left,” said Didic. “We knew that if we were able to hoist that cup on Sunday, the feelings would be so much better, so it’s definitely in the back of our heads, it’s definitely something we use as motivation just knowing that in our first year we have the possibility to raise that cup.”

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