M. Soccer losses have become cliche

BY SALIM MITHABY SALIM MITHADaily Pennsylvanian Sports Writer Sometimes it does not matter if you win or lose. Sometimes, winning is not everything. The Penn men's soccer team (1-6 Ivy League, 5-10 overall) must keep the above cliches in mind when it looks back at the last week of action of the 1993 soccer season. The Quakers lost three games last week, including a weekend sweep by Ivy rivals Princeton (7-1, 11-4) and Dartmouth (2-5, 9-6). On Saturday, the Tigers capitalized and converted goals on four Quaker errors en route to a 5-2 win. Yesterday, Penn fell victim to the Big Green by a final of 2-1, due mostly to a failed coverage in the last five minutes of the game. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Quaker senior forward Kossouth Bradford's reaction after the Dartmouth game was a mouthful. After the final horn sounded signifying the end of the Dartmouth game, and more importantly another Penn loss, Bradford collapsed on the field in agony, eyes closed, and lay motionless. Seemingly sapped of all his energy, Bradford covered his face and accepted yet another disappointing Quaker loss. Bradford had every reason to be upset. With a little over 11 minutes left in the game, Penn broke a scoreless tie, jumping out to a 1-0 lead. However, the Quakers blew the advantage and allowed Dartmouth to score two goals in the final 11 minutes, the go-ahead score coming with just five minutes remaining in the contest. "We were in a position to win [against Dartmouth], and once again we couldn't hold that position," Penn assistant coach Brian Kammersgaard said. "It wasn't a lack of effort – we just didn't do our jobs, especially on the second goal." The second and eventual winning score was quick and peculiar – so quick it almost seemed not to have happened. The play started when Big Green goalie Jeff Cucunato cleared the ball by kicking it high in the air to midfield. It seemed as if time had stopped, for the Quakers froze in their tracks and watched the floating ball. Then the silence shattered as the ball came crashing down, right to the awaiting head of Dartmouth midfielder Mike Bradley, who proceeded to head the ball further into Penn territory. The Quakers, still frozen near midfield, stood and watched as forward David Moran took it from there. Unmolested by the conspicuously absent Quaker defense, he put the final nail in what has been a disappointing season for Penn. "The Penn defense must ask themselves questions about what happened on that goal," Dartmouth coach Bobby Clark said. "I don't think they could be happy with the way we got that goal. Having said that, these things happen and we were unhappy with the goals they scored on us as well." Penn's only bright spot was when it did score. With 11:29 left in the second half, Bradford broke free, outhustling three Big Green defensemen to take control of the ball. With only the charging goalie between himself and the goal, Bradford looped the ball softly over Cucunato's head, and watched it land softly against the back of the net. However, the Quakers were unable to hold the lead. "We shouldn't have lost this game," Kammersgaard added. "When you score with 10 minutes left like we did, that has to be a victory." With a guilty look strewn across his face, even the Dartmouth coach appeared to feel for Penn's plight, almost sorry to have added to the Quakers' misery by pulling the rug out from underneath in the waning moments of the contest. "I thought they fought really hard," Clark said. "To be fair, maybe they deserve a little more than they got. We really stole this one from them. It was obviously a game where they didn't have much at stake, but still perhaps a tie might have been better – a more fair result." Anything would have been better than the weekend sweep. The seniors left on a less than momentous note, and the season ended with a disheartening loss. "It was the last game of the season and we wanted to end it on a good note," Bradford said. "It was also the last game of my career here and I wish it had ended differently." Sometimes, it does not matter if you win or lose. For the Quakers, it is how they played the game.