The Hopkins men’s soccer team came back from their five game losing streak last week, winning two games in a row. In Saturday’s game against Ursinus, the Blue Jays defeated the Bears in the Centennial Conference game 3-1. Hopkins improved to 4-6-1 overall and brought their conference record to 2-2-0.
Sophomore Kenny DeStefano was the star player of the game, scoring two of the three goals and assisting on the third. In the 17th minute of the game, Destefano received a pass from sophomore Cole Gennrich. Drawing out Ursinus’ goalie, Destefano was able to beat him and have a shot on the open goal.
Just over 11 minutes later, junior Kotaro Mitsuhashi received a pass from freshman Samy Ramadane. Mitsuhashi touched the ball to Destefano and, in a quick play, Destefano played the ball right back to Mitsuhashi at the top of the box. Mitsuhashi collected Kenny’s pass and scored from 16 yards out in the 28th minute of the game.
“It felt good to break the losing streak for sure. I think it was just a matter of time for us to bounce back and get back on track,” Mitsuhashi said. “I think it was key that every single member of the team stayed positive even after the losing streak. However, at this point, with our overall record being 4-6-1, we need to win the Centennial Conference Tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament.” Mitsuhashi later commented on the team’s goals. “Our goal each year is to make it into the NCAA’s and go from there, which we weren’t able to accomplish the last two years that I’ve been here,” he said. “It felt good to score, but we hope to score many more in the upcoming games. Since scoring goals has always been an issue for our team, we’ve been working on penetrating passes (especially long balls) over the defense. We usually possess the ball well in our own half, but when it comes to breaking down their defense, we’ve always had trouble.”
DeStefano echoed Mitsuhashi’s sentiments. “It feels great to finally start winning again. We finally have most of the team injury free for the first time this year, which has raised the level of play both at practice and games,” DeStefano said. “The entire league is having an interesting season, there aren’t any teams with more than two wins after the first four games. There’s a different dynamic than in previous years, and the playoffs are still within everyone’s reach. We are excited to move forward in the next couple weeks after knocking off two teams that were sitting atop the league. I still believe we are improving each week and have high expectations going into the important games that lie ahead of us.”
Ursinus had a few chances to score in the first half, but their offense was no match for the Hopkins defense. In the 41st minute, a shot was fired from about 20 yards out, but freshman goaltender Matt Paris made the save. Just one minute later, Ursinus got a free kick from about 35 yards out that was cleared away by a Blue Jay defender.
In the 47th minute, an Ursinus offender blasted a shot that looked as if it would go in, but Paris made a diving save to knock the ball out of bounds.
In the 58th minute, Destefano received a long ball over the defense from Ramadane. Destefano then beat the Ursinus defense to the ball, dribbled into the box and scored his second goal of the day for his first career multi-goal game.
The Bears got on the board in the 68th minute, on a goal off a Hopkins defender on a corner kick.
“This past weekend was really important for us. especially coming out with a win against Gettysburg earlier in the week,” senior Birin Pada said. “We played disciplined and consistent for the majority of the 90 minutes against Ursinus and those were definitely the determining factors in the game. Our next step, as a team, is to definitely keep up our results — now that we are full-fledged into the season a lot more mental focus is needed from everyone to continue on with success.”
Captain Rob Hueler offered his insights on the team. “The team is finally in a spot where we no longer have any injuries withholding players from games or practices. Because of this, we don’t have to fill positions with players that generally wouldn’t play there,” he said. “Now that we have structure to our line up, our chemistry and comfort on the field will only improve. This can be seen as some of the reasoning to our recent success in conference with back-to-back wins. Having Kenny up top has given the opposing teams a lot of difficulty marking such a large and active forward. He has really helped our team get forward on the attack by holding the ball up and creating runs off him, as well as being very dangerous with balls over the top.”
Sophomore Cole Genrich noted that the team’s victories helped improve morale. “It’s nice to come off a two game winning streak so early in conference play. Despite the team being young, and having an unlucky start to the season, the recent victories have really shown that we have the talent and heart to compete at the highest level in the division. Our goal now is to embrace the positive momentum from the past couple games and make the Johns Hopkins men’s soccer program one of the most revered in the country,” Genrich said.
The men’s soccer team returns to action on Wednesday, Oct. 9, as the Blue Jays host the Knights of Neumann. The non-conference contest is set for a 7 p.m. start on Homewood Field.
