Washington enjoying view from top of Centennial Conference

Courtesy of seven-game winning streak, Shoremen are 4-0 and in first place in league

Washington is 4-0 in the Centennial Conference for the first time in four years and 7-2 overall after registering a 13-8 victory over Muhlenberg Saturday. The Shoremen are a half-game ahead of No. 8 Dickinson and No. 20 Gettysburg – who are both 3-0 in the league – and enjoying their unfamiliar spot atop the standings.

“I think it’s pretty big because we’re all about conference play in terms of qualifying for the conference tournament,” coach Jeff Shirk said last week. “And anything can happen once you qualify for the tournament and the only way you’re guaranteed to get to the NCAA Tournament is with that automatic bid. I think with our focus and emphasis on conference play, being able to get a quick start is really big so that you’re not always playing from behind. I think it really helps because we have some veteran guys, but we also play a lot of young guys. So there’s that whole mentality of, ‘We might be OK,’ because we’re not playing tight. I don’t think it couldn’t have happened any better from a mentality standpoint to get off to the start that we did.”

Washington is also in the midst of a seven-game winning streak, which hadn’t been achieved since 2008. The team is two victories shy of matching a nine-game spurt during that aforementioned season, but Shirk insisted that there’s been little talk on that subject.

“I’d be lying if I said it’s not in the back of my head to see how many we can win because the goal is to win every single one of them,” he said. “And every time, we’re preparing to put ourselves in the best position to win that next game. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t lying in bed at night and saying, ‘OK, let’s keep this thing going and stretch it out as long as we can.’ But no, there’s absolutely no talk about matching anything from the past. I think we’re very big on preaching what are we going to do in the future and not dwelling on the past and trying to create our own way instead of riding the coattails of the guys who played before us.”