Textile's Morris burns Penn

Penn forward Steve Cohen received a rude introduction to college soccer Saturday when Philadelphia Textile midfielder Drew Molineux collided with the freshman, sending him to the sidelines with a concussion. The Quakers did not fare much better, turning in a lackadaisical performance in a 2-1 loss to the Rams at home. First-game jitters cost the Quakers, who sorely missed veteran leadership. The defense was short David Choi and Alan Waxman. Choi had knee surgery over the summer and will not return for several weeks. Waxman, who was academically ineligible for the contest, should return for Wednesday's game against Seton Hall. On the front line, senior Pat Larco is out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. Even some of the players on the field were nursing injuries, like defender Brad Copeland, who is recovering from an early-August appendectomy. As a result, six freshmen saw action, and even the returning Quakers played like they had never been together before. On several occasions, players failed to communicate on the field, causing passes to go awry. "Our distribution wasn't what it should have been," Penn coach George O'Neill said. "That let us down because we turned the ball over so Textile could counterattack. When chances came our way we just couldn't put the ball away." Penn played a new style of offense Saturday. The team attempted to tie up the middle of the field, a maneuver that was thwarted again and again by Textile. The Quakers intended to work the ball upfield on the wings to their defenders, but this strategy worked only once. Co-captain Steve Marcinkiewicz found defender Matt Stern all alone on the left side, and Stern powered the ball past Textile goalie Scott McCloskey to tie the game at 1. "We were looking for the defenders," O'Neill said. "That's where the free space was going to be." Penn knew the Rams were going to be battling for city pride in this Soccer Seven matchup, so the Quakers were prepared for a hard-hitting contest. But despite earning two yellow cards for rough play, Penn was unable to match the intensity of the younger, more aggressive Textile squad. "It wasn't in our hearts to beat them," Copeland said. "We've got a lot of guys who want to play, that are hungry, but [Textile] wanted to play more than we did." Throughout the game Penn was unable to keep up with the faster Rams team, particularly forward Leon Creary. Creary assisted on Textile's first-half goal, a blast by forward Patrick Morris. The Quakers, looking exhausted in the second half, allowed the game to slip away from them. Copeland and midfielder Jared Boggs missed key defensive assignments in the box. Two undeterred passes and a header later, Morris had scored his second goal of the game with 17 minutes, 16 seconds left to play. "We can either take this loss as a good thing or a bad thing," Penn goalie Andrew Kralik said. "We can use it and learn from it and get pissed off and angry, or we can pack our bags and it'll be a really long season." The Quakers are not blaming each other for the loss, which players described as "disappointing" and "a complete collapse." They can't, since nearly everyone made mistakes. O'Neill believes the team just needs to relax. "There's really no pointing fingers," Kralik said. "We've got to move on. If we still have our heads up our butts Seton Hall is going to come out and crush us."