The Northwestern men’s club soccer team will put its undefeated indoor record on the line Monday night at the 41 Sports C1ub in Highland Park, Ill.

For the past six weeks, the club has practiced every Sunday and then gone on to notch a ‘W’ the following evening.

After an up-and-down fall campaign that saw the Wildcats compile a final record of 6-6-2, NU has surged to a 6-0 start to its winter season.

While clearly pleased with his squad’s success, club co-president Matt Cozza expressed reservations as to whether the team could continue its hot play.

“Every year indoors we seem to play extremely well and then around Spring Break we can’t get enough guys to come out,” Cozza said. “They just stop showing up.”

The junior attributes the team’s recent success in part to the watered-down competition of the local men’s league, but is also quick to note that the quirks of indoor play favor his squad.

With only six men per team on the field at one time, as opposed to the 11 in outdoor play, the Cats, who often were undermanned during the fall season, can field a squad that goes two deep at virtually every position.

The club entered its final match of the fall against Southern Illinois with just seven players on the field — fine for intramural flag football, but unhelpful in the squad’s quest to earn a trip to regionals.

The 1-0 loss to Southern Illinois ended the team’s Fall season, and the upcoming spring promises to be a quiet one for NU, with just a friendly match against Loyola tentative for mid-April.

Cozza said he views Spring as a welcome break from club soccer, with the downtime allowing members the opportunity to join friends on the intramural scene and “just have fun.”

Don’t worry though. Cozza and the rest of the team beef up their time off the field with a full complement of FIFA soccer matches on Playstation 2.

“I’ll play up to 10 games in a row,” Cozza said.

Co-ed co-operation: Not to be left by the wayside, the NU women’s club soccer team has taken its game indoors as well, matching up with the men to form a powerful co-ed squad.

The mixed team has had almost as much success as its all-male counterpart, dropping just one of its six matches.

Of course, the women on the team are used to one-loss seasons, coming off an otherwise-flawless fall campaign that saw them lose a lone match to Purdue.

But NU avenged that defeat by beating the Boilermakers the very next week.

According to club president Hillary King, the women’s soccer team will play in its first spring season this year, with a rubber match against Purdue set for sometime in April.

While the team plans on adding other games to its slate, possible opponents have been slow to surface.

For now, the women keep themselves occupied practicing with the indoor team as well as watching international soccer.

King has followed the U.S. women’s team’s recent efforts to qualify for the 2006 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

“The (national) women’s team is the reason I started playing,” she said.

spring fever: The Cubs and White Sox aren’t the only Chicago baseball teams that will kick off the season with high hopes this April.

The Northwestern club baseball team will play its first game of the spring season April 3, against an opponent to be determined.

“I definitely think we’re going to be solid this year, we have a lot of good freshmen,” club president Chris McRae said.

McRae sees a deep rotation as the strength of his squad. He doesn’t expect the order of NU’s rotation to alter the staff’s effectiveness.

“We have five or six guys who can start, so we’ll just see whose arm feels good each day, ” McRae said.