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This Saturday at 11:00 a.m., the University of Maine men’s soccer squad opens America East Conference play at home against Binghamton. Many of this year’s games seem to be wide open, with all but two teams – Boston University and New Hampshire – holdingrecords at or below .500 for the season.
“Right now Boston University is on top of the league and has got a pretty good team. Other than that I think everyone is in the same boat,” said UMaine coach Travers Evans. “With conference I think there is a lot of parity in the league this year. There’s not really a clear-cut front runne; if you look at the league there are probably two teams who are above .500. Everyone else is struggling a little bit right now. So it’s kind of a second season; we can start fresh Saturday and get a good result at home.”
The consensus among the coaches and captains is that the most important step in doing well in this year’s conference starts with coming out strong and motivated on Saturday for their game against Binghamton who currently stands at 2-4-3 and whose player Jason Stenta was named America East Player of the Week on Monday.
“Every conference game is tough.the most important thing is when you’re at home you need to win. I know that Binghamton is going to be very physical, very organized so we need to make sure everybody’s ready to go,” assistant coach Dan Balaguero said. “The team needs to work hard for each other. That’s the most important thing. It’s what we’ve been saying all season but told the guys we need to start a new season here, starting with Binghamton at home, work hard and when it’s organized we should be in good shape. We’re looking forward to the Binghamton game. My former coach at West Virginia is the coach at Binghamton so myself I’m looking forward to the game, but I know the guys are really excited for it. We want to get the win, that’s it.”
Senior captain Copper Friend concurred.
“We’ve just got to find a way to get motivated to play. If we all give 100 percent we can win any game so we’ve just got to find a way to get motivated and look past our 0-8 record, and just come out ready to go,” said Friend, who had the assist in the team’s only goal during the trip to California.
Despite having lost all eight of their first games, their opponents level of play may prove helpful in having prepared the team for conference play. Both coaches and players agreed that the team can make a great deal of progress by taking cues from the teams that have defeated them.
“We’ve actually played a really tough schedule and we knew it was always going to be hard for us. Obviously we didn’t anticipate not winning a game but I think it’s been a good learning experience for us,” said assistant coach Balaguero.
“We’ve obviously faced some good teams so it’s prepared us in that sense, I mean looking at our record it’s kind of disappointing but I think it’s prepared us level wise,” added Friend.
Any team tends to perform better when set against a formiddable opponent because players will have to work that much harder for the win. The squad’s recent losses will help players figure out which areas to focus on and improve.
“We played a very difficult out-of-conference schedule and played some very good teams and we just need to look at everything so far and use it to prepare and get ready for conference,” said Evans, who also stressed the benefits of Saturday’s game being at home. “The trip was difficult with all the travel and the logistics and what- not, so it will be nice to be home to play a match here in Orono, against an opponent we always have pretty good games with, and get off the right start on Saturday.”
The team is looking forward to Saturday’s game so that they can put the lessons learned from their losses to good use. Summing up the America East Conference season, Fried said, “Conference play is obviously big, it’s gonna be close, every team can win against any team so it’s gonna be close and it’s gonna be competitive. And it’s definitely a must-win for us.”
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