His own coach says he isn’t the “prettiest” or “smoothest” player on the men’s soccer team, but junior Tobi Olopade might beg to differ.
In a dominating weekend for the Quakers, Olopade scored his first career goal in a 3-0 win over Albany Friday and added another in a 2-0 victory against Navy yesterday to give the team the Penn Soccer Classic title. But perhaps most impressive was his first career celebratory dance.
“We’ve had that one in the works for quite some time,” Olopade said. “We’ve been planning to do that one since freshman year and finally got an opportunity to unleash it at home.”
Sophomore Thomas Brandt also added his first career goal against Albany, and senior Alex Takukawa chipped in his team-leading fourth on the season.
The Midshipmen fared no better, as Olopade drew a penalty kick that led to a Christian Barreiro goal just 1:25 into the match. The 6-foot-3 forward isn’t known for drawing penalties (“The ref isn’t usually too friendly toward us bigger guys,” he said), so he was surprised by what he called a “really, really dumb move by the defender.”
With Navy floundering on attack, Olopade put an exclamation mark on the victory with a goal off of a long throw-in by defender Zach Barnett.
“Zach’s got a cannon of an arm, so a lot of times when he has a throw-in anywhere in their offensive half, I try to sneak away,” Olopade said. “So as soon as I saw the ball go I just took off.”
Despite Penn’s continued offensive fireworks, the story of the weekend was the back line, which limited Albany and Navy to a combined six shots, with only one on goal for junior goalie Ben Berg to save.
Coach Rudy Fuller said Penn talked about recommitting itself to defense after allowing seven goals in its first four games, but the players said both sides of the game feed into each other.
“We just concentrated on our forwards and our outside players just staying compact and staying connected to everybody else,” Barnett said. “So when we’re more connected, and we’re staying together, it’s easier to defend.”
On offense, the forwards praised the defense for helping to create opportunities.
“I think when we play good, hard defense, it kind of discourages teams; they don’t want to defend for 90 minutes,” Olopade said. “By staying sharp defensively, it opens things up a lot offensively, so it’s not just the top two or three guys scoring goals, it’s really all 11.”
With neither the back nor front lines willing to take credit, Fuller offered perhaps the simplest explanation forPenn’s success.
“These guys have now been playing together for a month, so things are starting to settle in, relationships are starting to grow as chemistry is starting to form,” he said. “And that makes a difference.”
