M. Soccer faces change after players quit

New Penn men's soccer coach Rudy Fuller only has 14 field players rostered after 50 percent of last year's team did not return. When the Penn men's soccer team takes the field for its first game of the season versus William & Mary Friday, it will be a vastly different team from the one that began last season with a stunning road win at Harvard. A new coach will be roaming the sideline with a new assistant by his side, but possibly more importantly, 13 players will be gone from last year's team. With a larger than normal player turnover -- due both to graduation and personal conflicts -- the Quakers of '98 figure to have little in common with the Quakers of '97. This season sees the arrival of a new head coach -- former Georgetown assistant Brian "Rudy" Fuller -- and a new assistant -- 1998 American University graduate Jonathan Pascale. But unfortunately for the team, these additions have been overshadowed by the departure of several talented and popular on-field leaders. The list includes junior midfielder Brian Foote and senior striker Morgan Blackwell -- both Honorable Mention All-Ivy picks during the '96 season. In addition to the loss of those popular on-field leaders, the team's top scorer of a year ago, senior striker Steve Cohen, also chose not to return for this season -- a decision that "was made well back into the spring," according to Fuller. In addition to four graduated seniors, nine players total chose not to return to the men's team for the '98 season. Five, including seniors Cohen and Gregg Kroll, juniors Thomas Ruth and Austin Root and sophomore Justin Hopkins chose to do so before the start of spring practice, while four others -- including seniors Blackwell and Matt Huebner, junior Foote and sophomore Ian Stone -- did so before fall practice began on August 27. The players left for a variety of reasons, one of which was undoubtedly the new more team-oriented style of play -- allowing for less "individual freedom" -- brought to Penn by Fuller. "Those six or seven players, including Brian Foote, including Morgan Blackwell, a number of other guys? whether it was them not being able to match their teammates' efforts, or just not seeing eye-to-eye with the program or the staff or the players -- for a variety of reasons we've had a couple of guys leave the team," Fuller said. "But they've left under good terms. There are no hard feelings between the coaching staff and the players." From an offensive standpoint, the team has lost over 70 percent of its goal-scoring punch from last season. From a leadership standpoint, Penn has lost eight valuable upperclassmen from its roster. From a numbers perspective, the departures leave the Quakers "short-handed" with only 14 non-walk-on position players on the roster. But the team is far from bitter at the departures, and it doesn't seem likely that internal conflict would plague the Quakers in '98. "We 'weeded out' the guys who weren't fully committed to it, so now everyone is just really ready to get to work," senior midfielder and tri-captain Jared Boggs said. "It's exciting, everyone is out there that wants to give their heart to the team." "The team has no hard feelings [toward those who chose not to come back], and they departed on good terms," junior goalkeeper and tri-captain O'Connor stressed. "They just weren't willing to give as much as the team needed this year? the only reason that some of the guys wanted to stay around was the camaraderie on the team, but they just had conflicting things that they had to deal with. We all still respect them and get along." And in a league where the top three teams in '96 were the bottom three teams in '97, the large turnover and new coaching staff this season may turn out not to mean a whole lot. After all, the Penn women's basketball team that returned only three players last season went on to finish third in a very tough league. Much could be made of the departure of four of the teams' top five scorers from '97 by their own choice, especially if the team gets off to a slow start. But if pre-season scrimmages are any indication, then the Quakers may not be facing as large an obstacle as some think. Last Friday the team drew 1-1 with Mercer Junior College -- a team who had handed the Quakers a 4-0 loss last spring when the squad still had Foote and Blackwell on the field. On the same day, the Quakers played to a scoreless tie against a Columbia team that had dismantled them 3-0 last season. Though "on-field" leadership may be a bit lacking due to the departure of some of the squads' more popular players, the team has chosen not to focus on the past, instead pooling their collective excitement for the season to come. "We are trying to become a good team, and we have the players here necessary to become that good team, even with the losses we've taken by some players dropping off the team," Fuller said. "We've had some guys that were major contributors in the past that aren't returning, but we have done a very good job of focusing on what we do have, and not worrying about what we don't have."

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