After a tough Commonwealth Coast Conference Championship loss last season, Suffolk University’s men’s soccer has gotten off to a hot start this year, placing second in the conference with a 7-4-2 record.
“Each year our coach installs more tactics and principles that he wants us to keep up with, and I think this year everyone’s been more accepting of their roles and more aggressive in the tactics our coach wants us to have,” said team captain Taj Jensen.
The team was on fire in the latter half of September, going on a five-game win streak that brought them three wins away from matching last year’s win total. This was their longest win streak in over 16 years.
“Our guys have done a good job of saying, ‘We’re playing well, we’ve used the five-game win streak to go in the right direction, but we’re not looking at that as a whole. We’re just trying to take it day by day, whether it be in a film session, in practice, or in a game, just trying to get better in that specific moment,’” said coach Bill Maddock.
This five-game win streak came after tough losses to Emerson College and Framingham State University. Jensen attributes a speech at practice from Maddock to the turnaround they had.
“I think it was a 10-minute conversation at practice the next day [after losing to Framingham State]. Coach let us know how he felt about our performance and that there’s a certain standard that he expects out of us. If we want to accomplish anything this year, things are gonna have to change,” Jensen said.
According to Jensen, going on a winning streak helped turn around the team’s morale after their rough start to the year.
“We’re already a pretty confident group, but I definitely see everyone trying harder in practice and being overall happier. Winning makes everything easier,” Jensen said.
Jensen highlighted the efforts of CCC award-winning freshmen like Francisco Valck and Nathan Harlow for contributing to this team right away throughout their hot start.
“There’s a couple of really big contributors: Francisco Valck, who’s a really dynamic attacking option. He’s transitioned extremely well, which is great, but from day one we could tell he was a great player that would, if given the opportunity, really take hold of it,” said Jensen. “Then also Nathan Harlow, who’s a freshman goalkeeper who’s stepped into a tricky role and made the most of it. It can be stressful some of the moments he was in, but he’s definitely played beyond his years.”
Their win streak would come to an end in a competitive game against a strong Division I Boston College team Oct. 2.
“We played really well there. Despite the loss, our guys were really happy with their performance and as a coaching staff we were extremely happy with their performance of how they battled and competed for the entire game,” Maddock said. “Yes, there’s an L in the loss column, but there’s going to be a lot of positives that we take from that.”
This was Suffolk’s first time ever playing an NCAA Atlantic Coast Conference team in men’s soccer, and the team is proud about playing competitively against a team from one of the highest-ranked conferences in the country.
“It was a huge opportunity and a huge milestone for our program. We don’t like to lose, we obviously enjoy winning, but there’s a lot of positives we can take from a result like that,” Maddock said.
As Suffolk heads into the playoffs, coach Maddock believes that the playoff experience gained last year can potentially help them win the CCC Championship this year.
“We had a pretty young team, we only graduated four seniors last year and again we have a pretty young team. Any time you play in a hostile environment like the final was last year, it only helps,” said Maddock. “If we’re fortunate enough to continue to win games and we find ourselves in the playoffs, come late October, early November, we’re going to look back on those experiences and say, ‘What can we learn, how was the environment like, and how can we be better prepared for it?’”
As Suffolk continues their playoff push, they’re preparing to play third-place Curry College at home Oct. 14.
