The RPI men’s soccer team has advanced to the postseason in three of the last four years, capping off the 2005 and 2007 seasons with three consecutive postseason victories to claim the ECAC title. When the squad, led by Head Coach Adam Clinton, back for his seventh season on the sidelines, takes the field this weekend to begin the 2008 campaign with a pair of matches in the Red Hawks Classic, it will look to build on this recent success.
The Red Hawks, who finished 10-6-4 (2-3-2 Liberty League) a year ago, will see the return of many key players from last season, including junior midfielder Michael Long, senior back Mike Henzel, and sophomore goalkeeper Alex Penny. In his freshman season, Penny posted an impressive 0.75 goals against average, with a .828 save percentage in his 14 starts in goal. Long was last season’s team leader in assists with eight, while Henzel started all 20 of the team’s contests.
Clinton describes the Red Hawks as a possession-style team that wants to play a very organized defense. By winning the time of possession battle, the team will attempt to tire out its opponents throughout the match and create late-game scoring opportunities.
Clinton stated that the team’s “number one goal is to get to the [Liberty] League Tournament.” This would require them to finish in the upper half of the eight-team league. However, this is not as simple as it might sound; Clinton explained that the Liberty League is “one of the best in the country.” The Red Hawks have won just four of 21 regular season Liberty League games in the past three seasons, despite being 26-24-7 over that span, and only Clarkson finished with a sub-.500 overall record in 2007, illustrating the league’s overall, top-to-bottom strength.
Qualifying for the Liberty League Tournament would be the first step toward reaching the NCAA Division III Tournament. “Our target is to make the national tournament,” stated Clinton. While there are at-large bids available, the definite way to make it there is to win the Liberty League Tournament.
Clinton also noted: “We are built for the playoffs … we get better as the season goes along.” The team has shown its ability in the last three seasons to put together post-season runs, by winning the ECAC Upstate Tournament twice, with the six victories coming by a convincing 13-2 combined score.
Perhaps the biggest unknown for the team this year is how the squad will fare without last season’s top two team leaders in points, Gary Sroka and Aaron Gundle. Sroka, the 2007 Liberty League Player of the Year, accounted for nearly a third of the team’s total goals with 12, and Gundle finished second on the team in assists with seven while netting four goals. As Clinton put it, the question is “how are we going to replace that offense?”
Clinton hopes this will be offset by the Red Hawks’ roster this season, what he considers the “best overall talent pool that [he has] had,” and explained that the team has a number of players on the roster that he expects could help replace those lost goals.
In the Red Hawks Classic, RPI will take on New Jersey City, a strong team that finished 18-5-1 in 2007 and qualified for the NCAA Division III Tournament, at 7:30 pm on Friday, and will face Rhode Island College at 4:30 pm the next day, both on Renwyck Field. Clinton said that for the team to pick up victories in those matches, concentration and “being patient, defending well, and taking our chances when we get them” will be key to getting victories.
