Men's soccer enters late-season slide

Team outscored 20-3 in 5 losses over last 3 weeks

The men's soccer team has one last chance Saturday to pick up a conference win.

Over the last three weeks, the Yeomen have accrued a lot of frustration, five losses and nary a win.

The team has fallen in conference matches against Denison University Oct. 12, Ohio Wesleyan University Oct. 18, Case Western Reserve University Oct. 23 and Allegheny University Saturday.

The team had a break from the heartache of conference losses in a head-splitting loss Tuesday at Marietta.

The recent skid - in which the Yeomen were outscored 20-3 - leaves the team's record at 3-13 overall and 0-7 in conference play with just one match left.

Before the current skid, the team had beaten a meek Capital University team and was hoping to turn around for the final stretch of the season. Going into the last six games, coach Chris Barker said the team could win five of them.

Looking back on an all-but-complete season, Barker still believes the team had the talent to have been in the thick of the NCAC race. "We don't mesh well, we don't play well as a team for 90 minutes," he said.

He said players need to learn to take constructive criticism better and play more consistently. Barker did single out senior sweeper and captain David Reeves as a consistent and tough player.

In key situations throughout the season, Reeves moved up from sweeper to try to launch some shots for Oberlin. Against Marietta, he played midfielder in an unconventional 3-5-2 set-up for the Yeomen.

"No one in the conference is clearly a better sweeper," Barker said.

Reeves is one of four senior starters who will need to be replaced next season.

The team is looking to rebuild, but first, here's a rundown of how they did in their late-season spiral.

Oberlin started out with a 3-2 overtime loss against Denison Oct. 12. Senior Mike Buckler, then recently reinstalled as a starting forward and junior midfielder Sam Krasnow scored in the game.

Oberlin's shots consistently hit the crossbar as the team's season-long shooting woes continued. Unfortunately, the next game was against a perennially tough OWU team under the lights at its stadium in Delaware, Ohio.

Oberlin fell 8-0. OWU converted an amazing eight of 23 shots in the game and buried the Yeomen with four first-half scores.

The loss was Oberlin's second conference blow-out of the year - and the second blow-out among all conference games.

In a game over break at Case Western - the NCAC's eighth place team - Oberlin didn't pick things up. Krasnow managed Oberlin's only goal in a 2-1 loss that saw junior Brendan Cody subbing as goalkeeper for senior starter David Kumpe who was out of town for a job interview.

At Allegheny, Oberlin managed no scores on 11 shots. In that game especially, players promoted from the reserve team saw substantial playing time.

Barker said that while they added enthusiasm, the play of the reserve players and those who played varsity all year didn't match as the players hadn't played together all season.

Tuesday's 5-0 loss at Marietta College was perhaps the ugliest. Each team managed 10 shots on goal. Marietta hit half of theirs; Oberlin hit none. And the game ended in an altercation, which first-year forward Jon Wilson attributed to that frustration.

According to players and Barker, Wilson and a Marietta defender had a scuffle with about five minutes in the game. Both players and a Marietta goalkeeper who punched Wilson after the first fight had been broken up were given red cards (see related story).

Wilson, like other players, could not think of a highlight of the last few weeks of the season. "I don't like to say that, but there really weren't" highlights, he said. "The last few games we've been so frustrated and down-hearted about the season."

Not everyone was dissatisfied with this season. For senior Mike Buckler, playing was a second chance to fulfill an old desire of his. Buckler graduated from Cornell University with an engineering degree. But along the way, he decided he wanted to go to law school and needed some extra liberal arts coursework for that to happen.

So he enrolled at Oberlin and joined the soccer team. "It's been a really great experience and I've been very happy even though our record is not great," he said.

As for next year, the top priority is finding at least one goalkeeper. Kumpe, the varsity squad's only dedicated goalkeeper is graduating and there's a big void.

Barker said the reserve team, which was revived this year for the first time in the memory of anyone involved in Oberlin athletics, will be structured differently next year.

This season, the varsity and reserve teams had 22 players each. Next year, he said, there will be a total of approximately 32 players. Only 16 will play in every game, a sharp contrast from the 19 or 20 who played regularly this season.

With a smaller team, everyone will practice together - and there lot to learn, from communication to cutting off opponents' shooting angles.

Barker said Oberlin's defense is good at preventing its opponents from shooting but not so good at taking away angles when it does allow shots. "All this learning," Barker said, "We'll have to do next year."

Another Oberlin forward is thinking more about this weekend's game against the College of Wooster than next year. "I think we are pretty strong," junior Mateo Massanet said. "We're going to kick ass on Saturday."