So my son's Tufts Club team made it to the national quarterfinals before falling to Georgia Tech 2-0 last evening. In their group games they beat SLU 1-0 in their first game on Thursday. Really solid effort. 2nd game was a 1-1 draw with Virginia Tech, last year's national runner up. VaTech scored first and Tufts equalized early in the 2nd half. When VaTech tied SLU, Tufts went through as the group winner and earned a spot in the round of 16 bs Oregon on Friday AM. Oregon scored a crazy goal early off a set piece after a foul. Tufts equalized just before halftime on a Pk given for a handball (legit call). The build up from Tufts leading to the handball was a nice play and the 10 cut in and hammered a shot from the top of the box. Tufts scored a second midway through the 2nd half off a headed corner. It was a great goal. Oregon keeper made an absolutely amazing save a couple minutes later to keep it 2-1. Ball was headed out off another Tufts corner and a MF let it bounce once and absolutely hammered a 1/2 volley low and to the GKs right. This was labeled for just inside the post and it was blistered. GK got a hand on it to tip it wide. With about 6 minutes left Oregon was given a PK for a foul in the box. It was iffy IMO. PK was converted for 2-2. No one scored in the ET periods and it went to PKs. Oregon and Tufts each converted their 1st tries and then both missed the second attempts (shots were sent wide). They then converted the next 6 each. On Oregon's 9th attempt the Tufts GK made a huge save. Tufts shooter then hit a ball hard and just high enough that the Oregon keeper couldn't keep it out. Tufts wins 2-2 (8-7). GaTech beat Grand Canyon in PKs setting up the quarterfinal match. Tufts struggled but were without 3 players for that match (2 were injured and 1 missed the match due to yellow card accumulation. They looked like a team that was playing their 4th game in 2 days.
Tufts had never earned a point in their 3 previous trips to nationals. So this was a big step. Even the Tufts AD sent a message congratulating them after their win over Oregon. The Tufts team/club is 100% student run and doesn't have any type of faculty advisor or coach. Oregon had a paid coach. BYU recruits players out of HS to come and be part of their program and they get money to play their (they've won 3 of the last 5 championships). The level of play is way higher than I anticipated. They can really play and I'm sure a lot of the players I saw probably could have played D2 or D3. Heard a rumor that some of the players on a couple of the P4 schools had been run off of the varsity programs at those schools by coaching changes.
We took a peek at BYUs roster and they're running two GKs out there that have to be 6'5-6'7. They were absolutely giant. BYU beat GaTech in the semis 5-0 and will play Ohio State in the finals. Ohio State beat Tulsa (yes TU) 2-1 and then tied GaTech. GaTech beat TU 4-1 so won the group with a better GD. This is only TUs 6th year to have a club soccer program, so not bad. They were easily the smallest school there followed by Tufts and SLU, and then Grand Canyon, Boston Univ and Boston College. The other 19 schools were all large public institutions like North Carolina, Ohio State, Texas, Michigan, Oregon, UCLA, Mizzou, Colorado, VaTech, GaTech. Tufts was the only D3 school to make the championship this year. According to parents of the older players, they are set up for a nice run for a few years and they all seem to be looking forward to my son taking over the GK role (current GK is a senior). We met a few of the older boys over the weekend. This group could be described as Tufts version of a fraternity (Greek life is not a big thing at Tufts). And they seemed to take in all the freshman (5 made the team this year) and really make them feel part of the group. My son seemed to be really comfortable around them which is not easy for him (he's a bit introverted). Glad he found his peeps!
