M. Soccer welcomes Elis to Rhodes Field

Two opposing forces collide when the Penn men's soccer team (4-9-1, 0-4-1 Ivy League) entertains Yale (7-6-1, 2-2 Ivy) Saturday -- the Elis' desire to remain in contention for the Ivy title and the Quakers' drive to win their first Ancient Eight contest of the season. The answer to the question of which team will emerge victorious lies not in the mathematical breakdown of statistics and records. Rather, the strength of each team's desire will determine the outcome of Penn's Homecoming game. "I think the drive to get our first Ivy win is the stronger force," Penn senior tri-captain Jared Boggs said. "It would be nice to end Yale's hopes of winning the league, but it's a lot more important to get our first Ivy win." Quakers coach Rudy Fuller, meanwhile, believes that the victory holds equal importance for each team. "The incentives to win are equal. Any time you have a chance to win a championship, you're going to give it everything you have to get that done," Fuller said. "So I expect Yale to come out strong, playing like gangbusters." On the flip side, according to Fuller, Penn will be driven by more than just the prospects of earning the elusive first Ivy win. "It's our last home game, it's Homecoming. We're going to be very excited to play," said Fuller, who assumed command of the Penn helm in the spring after five years as an assistant at Georgetown. "We have a very important goal that we set at the beginning of the year, and that was to exceed last year's win total [of four]," Fuller added. "Both teams have a lot to play for, so it should be a very entertaining game." As of two weeks ago, Penn's hopes of reaching five wins seemed a distant reality. Ten games into the '98 season, the Quakers, with a new offensive lineup, owned just one victory and a 0.3 goals per game average. The prospects in New Haven, meanwhile, looked even more bleak. The Elis, who returned three All-Ivy starters on offense from a '97 squad that finished a close third in the Ivies at 4-2-1, 11-5-1 overall, were struggling. Mired at 4-6-1 overall, and 1-2 in the Ivies, the inexperienced Yale defense had allowed 20 goals in its last eight games. A funny thing happened, though. Both the Quakers and the Elis turned the corner. Penn won three of four, as its once-dormant offense emerged to score six goals and bring the Red and Blue closer to the five-win mark. Yale, led by Ivy League-leading scorer Jay Gould (10 goals, 23 points) took three in a row, including a 3-1 victory over Columbia, to reemerge in the Ivy hunt behind 3-0-1 Brown and 3-1-0 Dartmouth. "This little streak has really gotten the guys' juices going again," Yale assistant coach Dave Barrett said. "We're playing with confidence. After a tough stretch I think we're ready to come together as a group and finish the season with a bang." Regardless of the outcome, tomorrow's game marks the final home appearances of senior tri-captains Ralph Maier and Jared Boggs. Maier, a midfielder, scored his first career goal in Wednesday's win over Maryland Baltimore-County, while Boggs, a midfielder/defender sidelined with a partial tear of the medial cruciate ligament, hopes to return against the Elis. "While many teams would have crumbled at a couple points [we faced] this season, Jared and Ralphie have really kept the ship heading in the right direction," Fuller said. "They are two of the hardest-working, most-dedicated guys in the program and they should be applauded for the amount of energy and effort they have put into the team this year." Boggs and Maier are the two remaining recruits from the Class of '99, having hung with Penn soccer through thick and thin -- the magical eight-game unbeaten streak of '96, the seven-game losing streak of '97 and the growing pains of a face-lifted program in '98. "I had high hopes as a freshman. I wanted to have a ring on my finger at some point during my four years," said Maier, who cites '98 as his favorite season. "That didn't happen but it's certainly not going to get me down. I've enjoyed playing here and I'm glad I could make a contribution and hang in there all four years." While both players named Penn's 1-0 victory at No. 18 Cornell in '96 --which set up the Red and Blue's first winning season since 1984 -- as the most memorable game in their careers, a win over Yale in their home finale could make them reconsider. "A win over Yale would definitely be up there," said Boggs, a native of Wayland, Mass. "This is my senior year, my last home game, so it might rank at the top," Boggs also believes that the game is unpredictable, given the two squads' hopes and their contrasting styles of play. "It will be an interesting game, because the two teams are such a contrast," Boggs said. "It might be a closely-fought game like many of ours are, or it could be a scoring spree. Who knows?"