The Danville Locomotive is making summer last a little longer.

Danville’s summer soccer team has qualified for the postseason for the first time, and it’s a significant achievement both for the current players and for the future of the program.

The Locomotive, an under-23 adult amateur team consisting primarily of collegiate players, earned the first playoff berth in their three years by finishing second in their division.

After closing the regular season Sunday with a 2-0 win over Cincinnati Soccer Club at Centre College’s Amend Field, the Locomotive turned their attention to their Ohio Valley Premier League semifinal against the Northern Kentucky Nitro on Wednesday in Florence.

“I think it’s a long time coming,” Locomotive coach Tate Spivey said. “It’s nice for our boys to be there, and I’m excited to watch them.”

Spivey is also excited about what making the postseason means for where the team has come from and where it might be headed.

“I think it shows what we want to do as a club,” he said. “For us, it’s about development and having an opportunity for our guys to play over the summer, and winning is fun. So what it tells me is that we’re bringing in the right guys. We’re building the right culture.”

Danville has carved out a niche in the OVPL as the only team in its division located outside a metropolitan area and a team focused on developing collegiate players in a league in which the level of competition can vary widely.

“Not all of the teams are what we are. We are a college development team,” general manager Jack Little said.

Little, the son of one of the team’s owners who moved into an administrative role this season, said winning is only one of the goals for the Locomotive.

“We want to build on-the-field success, but our main goal here is building community engagement, having a team for Danville in the summer and developing these guys on the pitch and allowing them to get some run in during the summer,” he said. “The college soccer season is really short, so it’s great for these guys to be able to get some competitive games in in the summer.”

Players such as goalkeeper Jonah Day, a Richmond native who plays for the University of Northwestern Ohio, are grateful for the opportunity.

“I love the opportunity to train and play with this team,” said Day, who joined the team late in the season and made his first start in goal Sunday. “The group of boys here is phenomenal, and everyone’s super close, which is pretty impressive considering there’s, what, six different colleges (represented). It’s been an awesome experience. The level is top-notch.”

Day stopped a penalty kick in the 13th minute and Jafet Figueroa and Nathan White scored second-half goals to help Danville close the regular season with wins in three of its last four games and finish 7-2-1.

Twenty-seven of the Locomotive’s 29 players are from Kentucky or attend college in Kentucky, including eight players each from Centre and Transylvania.

Spivey, a 2012 Mercer County graduate who has coached the team since it was founded in 2023, said this year’s team has a better blend than either of the previous two.

“This team definitely plays better together, and it is the most talented team we’ve had,” he said. “We have a lot of returners and guys who want to be here, so it’s much easier when guys buy in for us to play as a group.”

Little said he has seen that as well.

“We have had maybe more individually talented teams in the past that are maybe playing at a higher level than the (Division III) guys we have on this team, but this is the most unified team that we’ve had,” he said. “And some of these D-3 guys have just as much talent as some of the D-1 guys we’ve seen in the past.”

He said that unity has manifested itself in wins the Locomotive weren’t able to get in the past two seasons.

“It shows a marked improvement of our team,” Little said. “We’re in a place where we’re growing and are able to compete at a higher level, which is awesome for a club of this size, for a town of this size.”

The Locomotive lost to the Nitro 2-1 on June 29, and Spivey said winning the rematch will be a tall order as they play for a berth in the OVPL championship.

“They’re a tough opponent, and we’ve seen them before, seen what they can do,” Spivey said. “But we’ve competed so far and we’re going in with some momentum. It’s going to be a good game, and I think our boys can pull it off.”