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Men’s soccer motivated by heartbreak
Friday, Aug. 22, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH
Goalkeeper George Mansaray leads a CSM men’s soccer team that has not lost a game at the La Plata campus in four years.
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The date still looms heavily over the College of Southern Maryland men’s soccer program like a dark cloud shielding away all sunlight.
It was on that day that CSM had its high hopes of a postseason run to the national tournament spoiled in a 1-0 shortcoming to Maryland Junior College Conference rival Essex in the Region XX championship. CSM and Essex shared the Maryland JUCO title last year.
‘‘I don’t think I’ve slept since we lost,” half-joked CSM seventh-year head coach Tony Galeano on Wednesday. ‘‘We lost in the last minute of the game that we played really well, but it just wasn’t good enough.”
‘‘We had a superb season,” CSM sophomore forward and England native Marco Gaudio added about last year. ‘‘To do so well and get to the game with Essex and lose, it was heartbreaking.”
CSM captured the regional crown the previous two years, only to be downed by national power Louisburg (N.C.) in the subsequent play-in game to the national tournament each time.
But last year, just two weeks before having its playoffs ended by Essex, CSM finally felt it could dethrone Louisburg after playing its nemesis to a scoreless tie through a pair of overtimes. Louisburg was ranked sixth in the country at the time entering the road game, and the tie elevated CSM to No. 13 nationally.
CSM, however, never got the opportunity for a coveted rematch with Louisburg –– the decorated resume of Galeano still without a trip to the national tournament atop the Hawks program –– because of the Essex loss.
To make matters worse, Essex received the glory for upending Louisburg, 1-0, and earning the berth CSM longed for into the national tournament. Essex lost both its games on the national stage.
‘‘We knew we belonged [in the national tournament], because we tied Louisburg two weeks before that [loss to Essex]. So it hurt,” said Galeano, whose team will look for revenge against visiting Essex at noon on Sept. 6 in CSM’s second conference affair of the season. ‘‘It’s been a tough offseason. But it just drove us to recruit better in the offseason and try to get where we need to be.”
Galeano and his coaching staff believe they have constructed a more formidable team this year –– with a bevy of talented incoming freshmen –– that is capable of taking the celebrated program past its tripping points of the last several years and into the national tournament Nov. 20-23 in Phoenix, Ariz.
CSM enters the upcoming fall season just on the outskirts of a top-15 national ranking, receiving votes like Essex.
‘‘I know there is a lot of hunger on this team to achieve a lot of things,” said CSM sophomore defender David Mongey, of Dublin, Ireland, who was resigned to assistant coaching duties last year with an ACL injury that kept him from playing. ‘‘We’re very hungry to get on the field and get back to playing. [Last year’s loss to Essex] has been on my mind. I’d be crazy to say it hasn’t. All during my rehab back from injury, it was on my mind.
‘‘All we’ve been emphasizing is to focus on every game. Don’t look past each game.”
Of the 21 players on CSM’s deep roster, 14 of them are freshmen and several more are in their first year with the Hawks. The team retains its international flavor from the recent past with talent from England and Ireland represented.
There is a large contingency of Southern Maryland Athletic Conference players within the CSM ranks, teaming with talented recruits from Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
CSM has become such a hallmark program in the state that the coaching staff had to make cuts among the 34 hopefuls that came out for the team at the start of the preseason. Galeano said about seven players were cut.
For those donning the uniform of the proud program, the mantra is clear about the expectation level of the team. But before CSM can avenge last year’s postseason failure, it must first take care of business in the regular season.
The Hawks kick off the 2008 campaign this weekend in a trip to New York, playing Monroe at 2 p.m. Saturday and Herkimer at noon Sunday.
‘‘We want to beat Monroe on Saturday, that’s our goal,” Galeano said. ‘‘As soon as we start looking too far ahead, we’ll be in trouble. On paper, we have a very strong team but I can’t predict, because I don’t know what the other teams did in the offseason. Junior college is so crazy, because every year is a rebuilding year for every team. It’s too hard to tell if we’re a regional-championship team, because we don’t know what the teams up the road did in recruiting.”
Mongey said, ‘‘We do have a strong team. We have a lot of depth this year.”
Galeano added: ‘‘That loss to Essex [last year] will hopefully drive our returners to try to get us over that hump to get that national play-in game.”
Gaudio is completely onboard with his coach’s thinking.: ‘‘For the returners, [the loss to Essex] has made us stronger,” he said. ‘‘It’s going to drive our players this year. We can’t stress enough to the new players how heartbreaking last year was.
‘‘We’ve got a lot of new players, and everyone can do something to help the team. Everyone wants to start and play as much as they can. Everyone knows the potential of this team.”
Patuxent graduate Joe Okiniewski is among the new faces on CSM. The sophomore defender transferred from Shepherd University in West Virginia.
‘‘It’s intense like it’s expected to be,” Okiniewski said of CSM’s practices and intra-squad competitiveness. ‘‘[All the players] want to start every game. There’s not a lot of joking around.”
Playing Essex at home during the regular season is a favorable setting for CSM, which Galeano indicated has not lost a game at the La Plata campus in four years.
