M. soccer's dream season comes to a close

Win or go home.

This is often the true, yet hard to swallow mantra of playoff sports. The Hopkins men's soccer team, which finished one win shy of tying a school record, knew that the playoffs were their second season. A win, and they would play again in the near future. A loss, and they would play again next September.

"That is the unique thing about the NCAA tournament," freshman Scott Bukoski said. "Only one team gets to end its season with a win."

Coach Matt Smith's team earned its second consecutive automatic bid to the NCAA Division III tournament on Nov. 4, when they defeated Gettysburg College 4-1 in the final of the Centennial Conference tournament. Last year, the team made it to the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament, where they lost to defending champion Messiah. Looking to make it that far in this year's tournament, the Jays would have to start by winning consecutive games on back-to-back nights under the proverbially historic watch of Homewood Field.

The first game was played on Saturday, Nov. 10 against the DeSales University Bulldogs. Hopkins had already defeated Desales 2-0 during the Citrano Medical Labs Kickoff Classic at Homewood. But with a win or go home mentality, both teams knew that this time around the stakes were much higher.

"Facing DeSales earlier in the year definitely helped us to prepare for the game," sophomore goalkeeper Matt Mierley said. "But, like us, they had time to grow and develop as a team, so we were expecting anything. We just had to go out and execute our game plan."

In their first meeting, Hopkins outshot the Bulldogs 26 to 11, and the Jays played this game with a similar level of offensive intensity. While Hopkins managed to get off eight shots in the first half, including several shots within close proximity of the goal by Bukoski, the Jays were not able to put any points on the board.

On defense, sophomore captain Tommy McQueen and Mierley made sure that DeSales did not get as many opportunities on offense as their teammates had. DeSales only got off two shots in each half, and for most of the game, the ball possession remained close to the DeSales goal. At halftime, the score was 0-0.

"Coach simply told us the game was ours for the taking," junior captain Matt Carlson said.

Scoring remained stagnant in the second half, but this was not for a lack of effort from the Blue Jay offense. Hopkins had 11 shots on goal in the second half, including six in a four-minute span, from the 62nd minute to the 66th minute, but failed to get the ball past DeSales goalkeeper Rusty Riedmiller, who finished with 12 saves.

With the game set to go into overtime with a 0-0 tie in the 90th minute, tempers began to flair as junior defenseman and captain Ethan Mulligan got into a scuffle with DeSales's Andrew Marshall, leading members from each team to rush over to defend their respective teammates. A livid Marshall was given red card, and had to be pulled off the field by Bulldog teammates and coaches.

Sophomore defenseman Nathan Wysk felt that the incident had a significant impact on the psyche of both teams.

"It definitely took a lot of wind out of them, though, to lose a captain just before overtime. From there, we were able to keep the ball even more than before, which allowed us to eventually win the game."

With regulation over, both teams prepared for two sudden death overtimes - with whichever team scoring first moving on to the second round of the tournament. Early in the first overtime, Carlson fired a hard shot toward the DeSales goal but it was cleared off the line.

But just 43 minutes into the second overtime, Wysk, from the top left corner of the box, chipped the ball toward the goal. And out of the scuffle, Bukoski headed the ball to the left of Riedmiller for the golden goal, giving Hopkins a 1-0 victory.

"There is no feeling like scoring the game winning goal in overtime," Bukoski said. "It is a dream scenario. Up until the goal, nothing really goes on in your head except that your team needs a goal. After the game, excitement was running all throughout the team."

Next up for Hopkins, on Sunday, Nov. 11, was the second-ranked Battling Bishops of North Carolina Wesleyan University (17-1).

Like against Desales, both teams failed to score before halftime. The difference in this game was that N.C. Wesleyan outshot Hopkins 6-3 in the first half. In each of Hopkins's three losses during the regular season, they were outshot in the first half by their opponent.

"Coach said that the key to winning the second half and the game itself was to keep doing exactly what we were doing in the first half - playing hard-nosed defense and counter-attacking when the opportunity presented itself," Carlson said. "He mentioned that everyone in the soccer world thought N.C. Wesleyan would really give it to us hard, but realistically we just needed to believe that we could give it just as much as we could take it - really, we just needed to give it to them hard and by shooting all we could on them."

But N.C. Wesleyan's consistent defense and offensive advantage paid off in the second half, as the Bishops' Daniel Jones took a lob pass from the left side of the field and headed it past Mierley to give them a 1-0 lead in the 57th minute.

Five minutes later, N.C. Wesleyan would attach another goal to their lead. After being awarded a penalty kick, Marco Kirsch fired the kick to Mierley's left to give the Bishops a 2-0 lead.

Hopkins had chances to bring the score close in the second half. In the 80th minute, freshman David Drake blasted a shot that hit off the crossbar, and in the 83rd minute, senior captain Ben McAbee's header was just tipped over the crossbar. Even though Hopkins outscored N.C. Wesleyan 8-6 in the second half, the Blue Jays failed to score in regulation for the second game in a row as their season ended with a 2-0 defeat.

The Blue Jays' season ended in defeat, but could hardly be called a failure. The Jays finished the season 18-4, which left them one win shy of tying the school record for most wins. The team also scored 81 goals this season, four shy of the record set in 2002, and outshot opponents by 290 goals.

Carlson summed up the season, saying, "We came into the season with lots of pressure to repeat the success we saw last year, and I think we did a great job making sure that we turned those expectations into intentions."