With two harsh home-field losses to Macalester College and the University of Wisconsin-Platteville this past weekend, the Grinnell Men’s Soccer Team (4-5) is learning from their mistakes, trying out a new system and getting ready for another two-game weekend with matches versus Beloit College at 4:00 p.m. Friday in Beloit, Wis. and a home game against Monmouth College at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
Despite a 0-3 loss last Saturday, Grinnell played a hard-fought game—the Grinnell Pioneers only had one shot less on goal than the UW-Platteville Pioneers.
“I thought we played well both games—there were no individual mistakes that happened,” Matti Sahel ’11 said. “We wanted it, but they capitalized on their goals so you can’t really blame it on anybody—we just didn’t get lucky as a team.”
The Pioneers tried out a new system against UW-Platteville, a 3-4-3—comprising of three defenders, four midfielders and three forwards. This system allowed the Pioneers to have an aggressive offense, which they attribute to the offense’s continuous improvement.
“In the beginning of the season our defense was really good and our offense was struggling a little bit, but now we’ve got both aspects of the team playing very well,” Captain Andrew Stephenson ’10 said. “This weekend should definitely show us a little about how we’ll do in conference play and we expect nothing less than two wins.”
Last year, the Pioneers posted a 1-1 tie with Beloit and a 3-0 victory over Monmouth. With their offense in gear, the Pioneers can look forward to a consistenly strong defense, largely attributed to goalkeeper Ben Schemper ’11, to bring two wins to their 1-0 conference record.
“Schemper has been playing phenomenally,” Stephenson said. “He came into shape this year for the season and really has been better than he was in years past—and he was great even back then.”
“He lets us play more offensively because it’s not a spot we have to worry about,” added Alex Kohut ’10.
Schemper, who had nine saves in the UW-Platteville game, is confident going into the weekend.
“I’ve been making saves that need to be made so I think that I’ve helped the team a lot,” Schemper said. “A lot of that comes from the atmosphere that our team has right now—it’s a really empowering atmosphere, everybody is really positive.”
This positivity was not evident from the start—Stephenson cited that they came into the season considering themselves a skilled team, but after a few losses, the team united in a new, hardworking mindset.
“I think we’ve definitely come together as a team, it took a lot of hard, close-fought losses, it took a lot of running, but we are now working for each other and that’s something that I really wanted to see,” Stephenson said.
Ultimately, the men’s soccer team hopes their rekindled hard-working attitude and adjustments from prior losses will lead them to victory not only this weekend, but through the end of the season as well.
“Last weekend we were putting sentences together at times, getting close to paragraphs. And if we can do that this weekend it’ll be a step forward,” Schemper said. “Then we can move on to maybe putting everybody on the same page. Once that takes place it’s going to be really hard for people to beat us.”
