By Chris Gilbert
Staff Writer
The men’s soccer team saw its season come to an end Sunday with a loss to George Mason at home.
The Bonnies needed to win one of their last three games to earn an Atlantic 10 tournament bid. They lost three games down the stretch to three major conference foes. They finish the season at 8-9-2 with a conference record of 2-5-1.
The men started off the season strong with four straight wins, and then found themselves losing one weekend and winning the next. When the big games came, the Bonnies were not able to finish, something Coach Mel Mahler detests. He saw a season full of possibilities end.
“It’s tough right now. It’s disappointing,” Mahler said. “I still believe we are a top-eight team in the conference and should be in the tournament. We were not able to take care of the little things. We were not able to finish games, hence not being able to finish in the tournament. We had to do a better job defending on goals and had to find a way to win close matches. It is disappointing and shocking for us to come up short.”
The Bonnies will graduate 10 seniors: defender Kolby Banker, forward Brad Beaumont, midfielder Robert D’Cruz, midfielder Brad Vannino, midfielder Daniel Iannacito, midfielder James Reed, Forward Kaine Moar, midfielder/forward Emmett O’Connor, midfielder Andrew Derayeh and defender Zach Sullivan.
Mahler said he will look to the offseason to try and improve the players still in the program, but not necessarily replace the 10 players graduating this year. He said they will also look to improve through the next recruiting class.
“You don’t replace them. You can’t replace guys who have played 70-plus college games,” Mahler said. “You just have to bring in players who you think can make an impact on the field and hope over time will gain that similar experience.” Mahler said. “In the recruiting process, you hope to get similar players to the ones you have just graduated, but recruiting is a fickle business, and it changes from day to day. We have an idea of what we need, and that is basically players at every position.”
Mahler also said he hopes that not only the recruiting process will benefit the future of this team, but the returning players will make a difference. The Bonnies are young and will have a smaller amount of seniors next season.
“We have guys returning, and we look to fifth-year seniors Eric Smolarek, Nick Perillo and Jeremy Figler in goal,” Mahler said. “It starts with those three, but we have other seniors that who we will look to. It will be a different cast of characters next season.”
