Through every trial and tribulation, the boys varsity soccer team remained strong this year and made the playoffs yet again. Despite having a slow start and suspended players, the team sought revenge in the first game against Newton North, the team that knocked them out of the playoffs in the division championship last year.
Rocky start
The team played to a 4-4-2 record through 10 games this season, one of their worst starts in recent memory. Adding to their inauspicious start, at this point in the season, five players were suspended for attending a party. Four of the suspended players were starters.
“I think that this team has been resilient,” said coach Jeff Katz. “We haven’t had four losses in the first half of the season since 2005.”
Despite losing major play-makers on the team, a positive attitude and winning mentality helped them overcome adversity. Katz focused on the future and the goal of winning.
“If we treated it as ‘We’re doomed,’ then we would have been doomed. But we said ‘Okay. We will be alright. You are going to move here, you are going to do this and we will bring up this kid from JV,” said Katz. “Let’s do this. We can do this.’ That was the attitude we took with the team.”
Katz admired the team’s resilience in response to the slow start and the suspensions.
Senior Alan Zhou, one of the team’s captains, thinks there were a few problems that converged at the same time to lead them to the 4-4-2 record early in the season.
“Sometimes I think it was a lack of focus. Other times I think it was not all of us being on the same page,” said Zhou. “We lost seven or eight starters from last year’s season. Getting everyone acclimated to the new season and meshing together perfectly took a lot.”
Katz saw flashes of promise in his team’s play early in the season, but he recognized that the turnover of starters was a tough adjustment.
“When we went into preseason, we beat almost everybody,” said Katz. “And then once we got into the league, it was really tough. Our weaknesses showed up, and we have been working hard to clean those up. And we are in a pretty good place right now.”
Suspensions
Athletic Director Pete Rittenburg said that players must serve a quarter-season suspension, which for the suspended soccer players meant missing four games. Players would miss a playoff game if they were unable to serve their suspension during the regular season.
Five players were suspended for four games, starting with the team’s 11th game of the season against Natick.
The team and athletics department saw the suspensions not only as repercussions for their actions but also as a teaching moment.
“Obviously, it was bad. What they did was not right, and they all owned it,” said Katz. “Most of them weren’t caught; in fact, most of them turned themselves in. The fact that they turned themselves in was something positive. The way that they have worked to rebuild the trust with the team and to show what they are all about, I have been really pleased with.”
Zhou was confident that the team would respond well to the adversity because he knew how strong the team’s bonds were.
“Being together as a family and not just as teammates, the connections we have between each other are more than the ones we just had on the soccer field,” said Zhou.
Rebounding back to winning ways
Katz believes that many teams would not have been able to rebound as easily from a shaky start.
“You are going to get nervous, start freaking out, point fingers, but what I like about this team is that we got even more focused,” said Katz. “Even the Wellesley game where we lost 1-0, we got back to playing the kind of game we like to play.”
After this unfavorable start, the team shifted into a higher gear, with players rising to the occasion to fill holes in their starting lineup.
Over the four games in which the players were suspended, the team went 3-0-1 to bring their season record to 7-4-3. They won the next three games to make the playoffs with a record of 10-4-4.
Zhou is more than content with the way that players filled the void without the four suspended starters.
“I think that at the time of the suspension, we were at our lowest point of the season at our .500 record,” said Zhou. “And then I think everybody realized that we had to step our game up. And the people who got a lot of minutes in the last four games really stepped it up and allowed us to perform at a very high level, almost the same level that they had with all of our players.”
Senior Sebastian Dobrow, a three-year varsity player, is one of the 11 senior starters on the team, which has seven more seniors on the bench. Dobrow agrees that players seized the moment and were playing at a higher level.
“Senior Daniel Kunin has been stepping up huge,” said Dobrow. “In Alan’s recent bouts with injury, he has played phenomenally.”
According to Zhou, one of the main reasons the team has improved is because they are increasingly able to communicate silently.
“We are definitely all a lot closer together now after spending so much time together during the season,” said Zhou. “I think we realize who has what personality traits and how they respond to different situations. I think that we can start reading each other now, almost know what we’re going to do before we even do it.
Playoffs
On Nov. 6, the team played against rival Newton North and won a close match 1-0. Senior Eric Buck scored a goal in the last five minutes.
Dobrow said that assistant coach Kyle Williams makes a motivational video for the playoffs every year. This year’s video contained footage of Newton North celebrating after the penalty shootout in last year’s division championship game. Dobrow says that the moment this year when Brookline fans stormed the field offered sweet revenge.
Despite the team’s rebound, the boys soccer season ended abruptly with a 1-0 loss to Somerville in the second round of the playoffs.
“It was a season of ups and downs,” said Dobrow. “We over came a lot, but we weren’t able to go as far as we hoped. We thought we were a legitimate state champion candidate, but unfortunatly our road ended early.”
Max Friedman can be contacted at [email protected].
