With so many young players this year, the team hopes to build more chemistry and practice self-discipline.
Photo by MU Athletics
Men’s Soccer Ends Four-Game Win Streak, Falls to Mt. St. Joseph
Levi Zelmer
Although they had a rough start to the 2021 season, the men’s soccer team just completed a four-game win streak. They started off the season very slow, losing four of the first six games, while also forcing a double overtime versus Washington, Ohio, and ending up with a tie.
The Manchester University soccer team is a very young team with a brand new coach who came from Indiana Tech. The players appreciate his perspective. “Coach Brooks always makes it fun coming to practice every day, and I feel like he has great knowledge for the game,” said first-year Aiden Beachy. “He is definitely going to put us in the right position to turn our season around.”
And they have turned it around. As of Sept. 29 they were on a four-game win streak beating Greenville, Olivet, Huntington (which is an NAIA school) and Franklin. “It definitely has felt good to win a few games now,” Beachy said. “A lot of us know what it takes to win games, and I think it is starting to show with how we are preparing. Such as a lot of conditioning, and other stuff such as shooting on our own, and doing a lot of other stuff on our own as well.”
But the men are still trying to figure out how they can take their team to the next level. “I feel like our team just needs a little bit more of self-discipline, and some more team chemistry, since we are so young,” Beachy said. “We have a long season ahead of us, but I feel like if we figure out those two things we will be a really hard team to beat, and achieve our goal which is to win a conference championship.”
The team has a very hard schedule still ahead of them. They faced a couple of hard opponents last week––Franklin and Mt. St. Joseph––defeating Franklin but falling to Mt. St. Joseph, and will travel to take on Defiance Oct 6. These are all conference games, and they are hoping they can resuscitate their win streak if they want to achieve their goal of being conference champ.
“No game is going to be easy at all, from here on out,” Beachy said, “but we know as a team what we have to do to achieve our goals and come out on top.
“The coaching staff also knows,” he continued, “and that’s why we have been working so hard day in and day out, to be the best team we can be.”
Following Wednesday’s game, the next match for the men is on Saturday, October 9, at Hanover.