ANNA AVIK Senior Shaun Tsakiris breaks
past a Cal opponent in a game earlier this month.
By Brian Thompson
Daily Bruin Reporter
Excellence is expected from certain athletic programs here at
UCLA.
Those programs are expected to compete for the national
championship year in and year out, and often, anything short of a
championship is considered a disappointment.
In the past two decades, the UCLA men’s soccer program has
become one of those teams that Bruin fans and college soccer
aficionados expect to be in the title hunt every year.
The 2000 season was no exception. After all, the 1999 team had a
19-win season and made it all the way to the semifinals of the
Men’s College Cup before losing in a quadruple-overtime
thriller to Indiana.
But this year’s squad hardly resembled the team of one
year ago. Ten players were gone, seven of whom were starters.
Included in that group were five players who were drafted into
Major League Soccer. The veteran core that captured a national
title in 1997, and nearly did so again in 1999, was gone.
While expectations remained high, most observers expected a
slight drop off from years past.
Everyone, that is, except the UCLA soccer team. The Bruins went
out in the offseason and did exactly what a program of UCLA’s
caliber should do ““ it reloaded.
Head coach Todd Saldaña and his staff signed 11 freshmen,
but these weren’t your average freshmen. Going into this
season, those 11 had a combined 163 international caps between them
for various U.S. youth teams.
“Because of their extensive international play, the
freshmen coming in are more experienced than your average
freshmen,” Saldaña said before the season. “That
should help them have a shorter transition time into the college
level.”
The most heralded of the incoming class, goalie DJ Countess,
forward Adolfo Gregorio and defenders Alex Yi and Nelson Akwari,
had some big shoes to fill. But they also had some great role
models to help pave the way to success.
The seniors on the team were there for the highs and lows.
Co-captain Ryan Lee anchored the defense. Caleb Westbay and
co-captain Shaun Tsakiris set up the Bruin attack from the
midfield. And up front, McKinley Tennyson Jr., one of the most
prolific forwards in the NCAA, was expected to put goals on the
board.
UCLA was tested coming out of the gates. In their second game of
the year, the young Bruins faced Indiana on the road in a rematch
of last year’s NCAA semifinals. The Hoosiers put up a good
fight, but this time it was the Bruins who prevailed, 2-1.
That win set the wheels in motion. The Bruins steamrolled to an
8-0-0 start. Along with Indiana, UCLA left Butler, San Diego State,
San Francisco, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Clara and St.
Mary’s in its wake. Tsakiris and Tennyson both picked up a
pair of conference player of the week awards. And perhaps most
noteworthy, the Bruins found themselves atop the college soccer
world as the consensus No. 1 team in the country.
But like a championship-caliber team, the Bruins believed they
could play even better while in the midst of their winning
streak.
“I think we could be doing a lot better,” sophomore
defender Scot Thompson said before his team’s victory over
St. Mary’s. “Our potential is so much higher than
we’ve played.”
The Bruins would soon find out if they could reach that
potential.
Oct. 8 marked a new beginning for UCLA. On that date, the Bruins
played in their first Pac-10 conference game at Stanford.
Prior to this season, UCLA played in the Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation. But one of the drawbacks of that conference was its
relatively weak field of teams. So UCLA, Stanford, Cal, Oregon
State and Washington all decided to break away from the MPSF and
join the Pac-10, which was sponsoring men’s soccer for the
first time.
That Oct. 8 game was a turning point. The Bruins dropped that
contest 1-0. Including the loss to the Cardinal, the Bruins would
go on to lose six of their next eight games. Five of those losses
were to Pac-10 teams.
It was as if UCLA’s season could be divided into two
completely different parts.
Their No. 1 ranking soon became an afterthought. The new goal
became just qualifying for the playoffs.
For the Bruins, the frustrating part of it all was that they
believed they played good soccer during the skid. They had the lead
at one point in four of those losses. It seemed that the opposition
pounced on the one or two mistakes the Bruins made in a game.
But there’s really no shame in losing to teams like
Stanford, Washington and Fullerton.
“Obviously, we kind of dug ourselves a hole the past
couple of weeks,” Tennyson said after the Bruins’ sixth
loss at Washington. “We’ve had some unlucky games and a
couple of lapses at crucial parts of the game.”
The slump made the final weekend of the season all the more
important.
That weekend, the Bruins hosted the Bay Area schools, including
No. 1 Stanford. In a see-saw battle, the Bruins upset the Cardinal
in the second overtime on a Tennyson penalty kick in the Nov. 10
game.
Two days later the Bruins beat Cal 3-1. They did their job. Now
it was up to the NCAA selection committee to determine if the
12-6-0 Bruins were worthy of an invitation to the tournament.
UCLA’s worst fears were soon put to rest. For the 18th
consecutive year, the Bruins made it to the tournament.
But they just barely made it. Pitted against the No. 4 seed San
Diego, the Bruins were among the last four teams to be granted an
at-large bid in the field of 32.
The Toreros were a familiar opponent for the Bruins. In fact,
this year’s match-up was a rematch from the first round a
year ago.
But unfortunately for the Bruins, they could not duplicate last
year’s result.
In an incredibly physical, intense game before a raucous crowd
at San Diego, the Toreros ended the Bruins’ season on a
dramatic golden goal in the first overtime period to win 1-0.
“It’s obviously disappointing,” Tsakiris said
after the game. “We would’ve liked to make a good run
this year.”
Though they did not duplicate their success from a year ago, the
Bruins put together a nice season. There were plenty of ups and
downs, but the future is bright for the program.
Six starters will return. Among those starters is Yi, who was
named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year and to the All-Conference second
team. Countess also made the second team. Honorable mention
All-Conference players who are returning include Thompson, Akwari
and Gregorio. Plus, the Bruins will have a healthy Ryan Futagaki
back. The junior midfielder missed all but two games due to a knee
injury.
But perhaps the most productive thing to come out of this season
is the experience gained by the young team. They are the future of
the program.
And if this season is any indication, the future remains
bright.