A rigorous stretch of seven games in 22 days is taking its toll on the Penn men's soccer team with the most important part of the schedule fast approaching.
The last of those seven games is a pivotal clash tomorrow at Yale, and Penn will have to go at it with at least one of its defenders relegated to the sidelines by injury.
Coach Rudy Fuller bemoaned the situation Wednesday while on the way to the hospital to visit his latest casualty, sophomore Josh Baugh, who broke his leg in Penn's 2-1 loss to American that night.
The coach expressed his unhappiness with the grueling schedule, which is one of the main factors in the quantity of injuries.
"In a perfect situation, every college team in the country would play once a week, every Saturday," Fuller said.
More immediately, the coach has more pressing issues to deal with - joining Baugh on the injury list is defender Andy Howard, who has been nursing injuries all year.
His most recent ailment, a pulled right quad, kept him out of Wednesday's game and is raising questions about his availability tomorrow.
The injury "happened at Dartmouth," Howard said. "It happens when you're favoring one [side] because it's a little bit hurt, and then you hurt the other one."
But the senior, who hasn't been able to practice with the team all week, believes the game is too important to miss.
"A lot's going to depend on the next few days," he said. "But there's no way I'm not going to play. I'm going to be out there."
Fuller seemed less confident in his player's fitness, calling the dilemma "a decision that the coaching staff will make with the trainers and Andy." But the coach will have plenty of options to choose from should he decide to give the Portland, Ore., native the weekend off.
"You have [Lee] Rubenstein, [Kevin] Unger, [Andrew] Ferry . depending on where else we go, we've got somebody else," he said, possibly referring to Ryan Porch's potential move to outside right back - where he played last season - from midfield. "Who we start with on Saturday, I have no idea."
"It's terrible," senior goalkeeper Dan Cepero said of Baugh's injury. "It's just part of the game, I guess. . We're looking to get [Howard] back, maybe we move [Porch] back to play outside back, and we'll go from there."
Whoever joins the back four at game time will have to improve on Wednesday's losing effort, which Fuller and Cepero attributed to defensive miscues.
"It wasn't like any one person created a monumental mess-up that just cost us the game," the captain said.
There were "just a couple of breakdowns - the two goals, obviously. But we're looking to correct that."
