The men’s soccer team is coming into the new season full of expectation following last year’s successful campaign in which the squad grabbed third place in the Ivy League and reached the first round of the NCAA tournament.
“We’re anticipating a strong season this year,” senior defender Tim Sedwitz said. “No one really knew about us last year, and we kind of flew under the radar, but this season we’ve got more eyes on us.”
This year’s squad, which returns nine of 11 starters, will be anchored by its stellar back line. Senior captain Sean Lynch will patrol the goal while the defensive line will be led by four-year starter Teddy Schneider, sophomore All-Ivy League Mark Linnville, and third-team preseason All-American Josh Walburn.
“We have an experienced group, especially in the back, and we think our defense should be very strong this year,” head coach Jim Barlow said in an e-mail. “We are counting on a large senior class to provide the leadership that we will need to set the tone for what our standards need to be every day in training.”
“The strongest part of the team is our defense,” Sedwitz said. “We just need to make sure the back line stays intact the whole year.”
The team also possesses a unique attacking threat in the form of junior striker Antoine Hoppenot. Hoppenot, who scored a hat trick in last season’s nationally televised game against Yale, has already scored once this season and received Athlete of the Week honors from GoPrincetonTigers.com.
“Antoine Hoppenot is off to a good start,” Barlow said. “He was our leading scorer last season and now, as a junior, he has the ability to be one of the better forwards in our league.”
These veteran players, along with a strong freshman recruiting class, will have to work hard to fulfill preseason expectations: The team was ranked No. 27 nationally by both College Soccer News and TopDrawerSoccer.com. Still, few on the squad are particularly concerned with the early season accolades.
“We don’t focus on the rankings,” sophomore forward Matt Sanner said. “It’s good to have them, but it’s better to earn them. Preseason rankings don’t mean anything.”
Indeed, the squad may struggle to retain such awards following a shaky 1-2 start. After an opening-day 1-0 win at Farleigh Dickinson, the team has dropped two in a row, losing 3-2 to Lehigh and 2-1 to American. The Lehigh match was particularly biting for the squad: After opening up a two-goal advantage thanks to goals from junior midfielder Manny Sardinha and senior midfielder Brandon Busch, the Tigers gave up three unanswered goals in a 12-minute span in the second half to throw away the game. Similarly, Princeton dominated the American match, outshooting the Eagles 15-10, but had to settle for a late consolation goal in the 87th minute, courtesy of senior defender Benjamin Burton.
“Both of these results were frustrating for us, and we learned right off the bat that little details decide the outcome,” Barlow said. “We’ve given up some goals on counters and restarts that have really hurt, and on the other end of the field we are still trying to find our rhythm offensively.”
Sanner agreed. “We’ve had a tough start to the season,” he said. “We lost two games we shouldn’t have lost. We’re trying out a new formation and still fixing some problems. We’ve struggled to find leadership, and maybe we were a little too confident and complacent coming back from last season.”
Following these setbacks, the team will have to work even harder to achieve its goal of taking the Ivy League crown and moving past the first round of the NCAA tournament.
“We were pretty disappointed about losing to Bucknell last year because we all wanted to go further,” Sedwitz said. “At the same time, I think that loss will help focus us this season.”
Indeed, the team will have a chance to rebound and prove itself this weekend when it takes on Georgetown at Roberts Stadium on Friday and Villanova in Philadelphia on Sunday. With a nationally televised match against Harvard next month looming, the squad knows it will have to perform well in matches like these if it wants a shot at the Ivy League title.
“We’re really focused on winning the Ivy League this year,” Sanner said. “We think we should have won it last year.”
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