The Grinnell Men’s Soccer Team showed they could pull themselves out of a pretty deep hole on Saturday, Sept. 18, when they came back from a 3-0 deficit after only 20 minutes—and ended up winning 5-3 against the Red Devils of Eureka College.
A decision by both Head Coach Brian “Jaws” Jaworski and the fourth-year captains not to start seven players due to their failure to complete a team building exercise earlier in the week may have lead to the slow start.
“The guys [who were benched], they were very supportive of their teammates out on the field, they were standing up and cheering for them and trying to bring them back from that deficit,” Jaworski said. “It was at that point in time when I said, ‘Ok guys, now I’ve seen what I need to see,’ and that is everybody putting the team ahead of themselves.”
At that point in the match, Coach Jaworski began subbing his players freely, to which they responded by going on a 5-0 run taking a Grinnell record 45 shots on goal. 15 of those 45 shots, a Grinnell College individual record, were taken by Mark Rosenberg ’11. Rosenberg also earned three assists during the game and the designation of Midwest Conference Men’s Soccer Offensive Performer of the Week.
“Rosie really picked up his game,” said Omeed Kashef ’14, using Rosenberg’s nickname. “Not only was he dangerous with the ball but without the ball he marked his man, made him make a mistake and capitalize on that and finished one opportunity he had and created three other goals. Without him we wouldn’t have come back.”
The squad is coming off of a tough out-of-conference season against several regionally ranked opponents that left them with a record of 2-4-2. Most recently, the team took on the Dutch of Central College on Wednesday, Sept. 22, which ended in a disappointing 3-0 loss. Rosenberg believes the score does not quite represent how close the game actually was.
“We had an overall pretty decent performance, we had some sloppy moments that cost us three goals,” Rosenberg said. “They really only had three chances to score and that was off our mistakes mostly.”
From this point on the Pioneers will begin their Conference schedule with their first game at Illinois College on Sun., Sept. 26 at 1:30 p.m. Last year the Pioneers won the Conference tournament after being placed only fourth following regular season play.
“[Coach Jaworski] told us his goal would be to make the top four, but he said after he thought about it a bit more, he analyzed the team, analyzed players, individuals and told himself and us that we can actually win the conference,” Kashef said. “We have the potential, that is our goal.”