Penn Sports Century 1973: Seddon recalls dramtic win over Harvard

During the American soccer boom of the 1970s -- when international stars like Pele and Beckenbauer were filling American stadiums in the NASL -- Penn frequently drew crowds of 10,000 to Franklin Field. Seddon, whose team reached the NCAA quarterfinals in both 1972 and '73, recalls one particularly great game against Harvard. · Bob Seddon: It was a game here against Harvard in 1973. It was the largest collegiate crowd at Franklin Field -- 15,000 -- there's pictures around. We were ranked No. 3 in the country and Harvard was ranked No. 2 in the country. Huge crowd. It was our best team ever in the 18 years I coached. We had four or five All-Americans on that team and they had a player by the name of Solomon Gomez, they were very foreign -- it was an outstanding team.? We won 5-2 and we just basically outplayed them all over the field. The goalie for Harvard at that time was later an Olympic goalie, his name was Shep Messing. He's from Long Island and he's written many books on goalkeeping; he's played and coached at the professional level, so to score five goals on Shep was unbelievable. Harvard scored in that game off a phenomenal shot by Gomez, a Nigerian who was just one of the greatest players that ever played in the Ivy League. He took a direct kick from outside the 18.? It was a direct kick in the upper corner, a rocket. At that time the game was 2-2. And Steve Baumann, who was a coach at Penn after me, scored two great goals. Baumann could throw that ball almost all the way across the field. And we had Tom Lieberman on that team, who was a great player. We played a great team game and took it to them and we were fired up to the gills, and the crowd -- if you could picture the upper deck , it was stacked on our side all the way from one end to the other -- and that was very, very exciting.