This time last year, the Jumbos were coming off the back of their 2014 NCAA Championship win, hoping to defend their crown. Despite early successes against Colby, Conn. College and Trinity in September, the Jumbos suffered back-to-back double overtime losses against Amherst and Hamilton in October.
Tufts finished third in the NESCAC with a record of 5-2-3 behind Amherst and Middlebury and bowed out of the NESCAC tournament in the quarterfinals after a tough 1-0 loss to Bowdoin. The team extended its season by earning an NCAA bid and won its first-round and second-round games against Salisbury and Montclair St., respectively, by one-goal margins. In the third round at Kenyon, Tufts' hopes for consecutive title runs were dashed by a Kenyon goal in the final 20 seconds of the game that gave the hosts the 3-2 win and knocked Tufts out of the tournament.
“We are returning a bunch of good upperclassmen so we have a good core group,” senior Daniel Sullivan said. “We have had some issues [converting shots to goals] but I think we have the tools we need to be able to score a lot of goals this season.”
With six players having graduated with the Class of 2016, the new senior class will have to step up to fill the spaces they left. Monil Patel (LA ’16) and Connor Schaible (LA ’16) were both starting full backs, so the defense will need to integrate new starters this season. Junior Matt Zinner, who was a starter his first year, will once again fill a starting defensive spot after struggling with a broken foot last season.
“He’s got experience and we know he can handle it,” coach Josh Shapiro said. “[Junior] Stephen McMillian is the second starter. He’s played in the role but hasn’t really gotten the chance to shine in the role. One of the strengths of this group is that we’re two-deep everywhere in the back. We feel that we are pretty close to two-starters-strong in each position, which gives us a huge opportunity to manage bad situations and play to our depth.”
Senior co-captain Nathan Majumder, who was the NESCAC’s second-highest scorer in 2015 with 11 goals, will resume his position at the front as the team's go-to finisher. Classmate and fellow co-captain Zach Halliday will run the midfield. A dominating force both on and off the field, Halliday is a vocal leader who, along with Majumder and the other seniors, will look to guide the team to another deep NCAA tournament run.
“The seniors are absolutely necessary to any team’s success,” Shapiro said. “Zach Halliday is about as commanding, dominant and confident as a leader can get. He’s an excellent guy for people to relate to and listen to, and he does a lot of things right. Nate Majumder also does everything right. When he talks, people listen. The whole senior class will be contributing on the field and in the locker room.”
The team welcomes eight first-years, several of whom have already made powerful impacts on the team during Saturday’s pre-season scrimmage against Bowdoin. Outside midfielder Gavin Tasker, a first-year, deftly moved the ball down the wings and was responsible for fast transitions from the defensive end up to the attackers, giving Tufts chances to score. Tasker even netted a goal of his own, and the Jumbos eventually won the scrimmage 3-2.
“I was just trying control my emotions and go out there and play my game,” Tasker said. “I felt that the best way to do that was to play defense, close and press and do whatever I could control. The soccer would come. We wanted to stay respectful and use the game as an opportunity to have everything that we’ve been working on in preseason come together.”
Another first-year contributor on Saturday was outside midfielder Zach Trevorrow, who got ahead of the Bowdoin defenders several times to provide the cross in for a chance at a goal. Classmate Zach Lane assisted Majumder’s goal, making his debut as well.
“I think we showed that we have a good ability to respond – going down one nothing and still fighting to come back,” Halliday said. “That’s going to be really helpful in a NESCAC game because every year you’ll go down and how you respond is a good indicator of how far you’ll be able to make it. Everybody that came in raised the level of the game and that’s another big thing that hopefully we’ll be able to hold onto and maintain for the season.”
The Jumbos' main problems last season arose from difficulty converting shots to goals. Tufts' scoring efficiency lagged far behind that of Middlebury, the NESCAC’s top scoring team last season, which scored 46 goals from 296 shots. The Jumbos, meanwhile, only scored 27 goals from 272 shots, slotting them in at just fifth in the conference in scoring.
“The reality is that in college, soccer teams are very good at making it hard for you to create goals. You have to find different ways to score,” Shapiro said. “That’s something that we learned last year defending the championship, seeing so many different formations and styles against us that the guys had to become adaptable. The ability to do it in different ways, on a different day, on different surfaces and in different conditions means we have to be adaptable.”
Although the team is still working out some kinks, Tufts is confident ahead of its first game against Endicott today, and then will look to start strong in the NESCAC against Colby on Saturday.
Men's soccer sets sights on second NCAA championship in three years
