Penn ends skid, slays Dragons

At halftime of its game with Drexel -- four days after suffering a shutout loss to Brown -- the Penn men's soccer team was asking, "Can we ever score a goal?" Nine minutes later, the Quakers' question was answered as forward Max Englehardt scored Penn's first goal of the game and his first of the season. And the Quakers did not stop there, defeating the Dragons 3-1 yesterday afternoon at Rhodes Field. "Were they flat or was it because we came out and jumped on top of them?" Penn coach George O'Neill asked after the game. "We played good football. The boys certainly kept the pressure up and kept working at it. Everybody kept their heads in the game." Penn (4-7-1) was nearly overpowering in the first half, keeping consistent pressure on Drexel goalie Brian Herr. The sophomore did not fold under stress however, stopping all 10 Quakers shots, mostly on punch-blocks over the net. "In the first half, we were pounding their goal," Penn goalie Andrew Kralik said. "It was looking like we were going to kick the crap out of these guys." Drexel (9-4-3) is a very young team, having lost more than half the 1994 Soccer Seven championship squad to graduation. Inexperience caused the Dragons to falter in the face of Penn's senior expertise. The key to the Quakers' attack was the movement of the forwards. The majority of Penn's offensive production has come from seniors Steve Marcinkiewicz and Brendan Sullivan and the rest of the midfield. It is the forwards, however, who draw the defense toward them and create the openings through which the midfielders can score. The second half was utter Penn domination. Drexel was unable to counter the Quakers' many offensive weapons. The Dragons' key defense was to make a wall 25 yards out and attempt to stop Penn there. Time and time again, Drexel failed. Marcinkiewicz, Penn's leading scorer, put home the Quakers' second goal unassisted. The co-captain faked left and shot right on a breakaway, driving the ball past Herr. The Penn backfield played a large role in the victory, though the Dragons rarely crossed into the Quakers' end. In the first half, Drexel tried a little pass instead of a shot off an indirect kick. Defenders Matt Stern and Brad Copeland were not fooled, converging quickly enough to prevent a goal. Defender Alan Waxman sacrificed his body for the team, falling down in front of a Drexel attacker and blocking another Dragons shot with his head. "The defense pretty much did the job," Kralik said. "Drexel was getting pumped up at the end there, and things got a little bit close. We were beating them bad the whole game. There was no reason to let them back in. It was a lot of added pressure we didn't need." The Dragons' lone goal of the game was scored as a result of Penn mental mistakes. Three Quakers were in position to stop midfielder Niles Johnson, but none did. Midfielder Read Goodwin went down, and Kralik came out to try to field the ball, leaving Johnson with an open path to the Penn goal. The Quakers got revenge three minutes later, as freshman midfielder Austin Root scored the third goal all alone. With two minutes remaining in the contest, Drexel became desperate. The Dragons brought all their players forward to field a corner kick, including Herr. Their end of the field was empty. Picking up an outlet pass from Waxman at the midfield line, Root had neither teammates nor defenders in front of him as he shot into an empty Drexel net. While the play seemed quite random, it was in fact pre-planned. From the moment the Quakers spotted Herr in their goal instead of at the opposite end of the field, they knew what Root had to do. "If we can't defend the goal with 10 guys back there, 11 is not going to help," O'Neill said. "All Austin had to do was get it and run with it, and nobody would be able to catch him. Just get it and run with it." With this triumph, Penn snapped a four-game losing streak and ended Drexel's string of six games without a loss. "They knew they could win the game," O'Neill said. "It was just a case of making it happen."