Courtesy of Jake Mrozewski

Midfielder Dylan Langley was on the offensive at Saturday's game.

BY JARED NOLAN

In print | September 25, 2008

Swarthmore Men’s Soccer suffered its first loss of the season last Saturday in Maryland. The Garnet fell to 5-1-1 (0-1 CC) at the hands of the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays, who improved to 6-2-1 (1-0 CC). Johns Hopkins struck early in the match, and Swarthmore could not find a way to recover. After only 11 minutes the Garnet was down two goals, and neither team scored for the remainder of the game.

Coming into the match, Swarthmore was ranked #11 in the nation after an impressive upset of #5 Stevens Tech (N.J.). Ironically, the Garnet was the one who struck early in that game with a 10th minute goal by Morgan Langley ’11. After a second half goal by David Sterngold ’12 off a feed from Dylan Langley ’10, the score was 2-0 and remained that way for the rest of the match.

The #11 ranking the men held for a week was the highest national ranking ever attained by the men’s soccer team. With the loss to the unranked Johns Hopkins, however, Swarthmore fell out of the top 25.

The Blue Jays’ first goal came in the eighth minute off a masterful pass into the box by Johns Hopkins senior Akash Naik. Sophomore forward Scott Bukoski collected the pass and fired the ball into the back of the net past the save attempt by Swarthmore goalie David D’Annunzio ’12.

Johns Hopkins struck again in the 11th minute off a corner kick. Bukoski took the corner and sent it to Blue Jay junior Max Venker, who passed it right back to Bukoski.

Bukoski then played the ball into the center where senior Matty Carlson deflected it off his heel to charging freshman Drew Holland who finished the play with a goal. D’Annunzio attributed the early opportunities for the Blue Jays to “coming out flat.” “I feel like we were not ready to go,” he said.
His teammate Toby Heavenrich ’12 agreed. “We need intensity in the beginning of the game,” he said, “and then we need to stay with it.” Swarthmore Head Coach Eric Wagner expressed similar concerns. “We weren’t prepared,” he said. “We looked like we were deer frozen in the headlights.”

He went on to say that the Garnet got out of its funk and recovered to keep pace with Johns Hopkins, but it was too late.

Swarthmore’s best chance came in the middle of the second half when Dylan Langley unleashed a shot that just missed the net and ricocheted off the crossbar. The Garnet had trouble generating scoring opportunities because the Blue Jays “were more physical than we were expecting,” D’Annunzio said. Wagner noticed the same thing.

“They were knocking us off the ball and winning virtually every challenge,” he said. The game was beneficial for the team, however, in that it was a learning experience. “We learned that you can’t let your focus or concentration down even for a moment,” Wagner said, “and we learned what we have to do to be prepared; [we learned] how important pre-game preparation is.”

As the Garnet prepares for the upcoming games this season Wagner notes that “this is a big week.” “And I fully expect that we will rebound,” he added, “because we’re a strong team with talented and confident student athletes.” Swarthmore looks to improve its Centennial Conference record with a home game against Dickinson College on September 27th at 6 p.m.

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