Midfielder John Stertzer chases after Louisville’s Paolo DelPiccolo during the Terps’ 3-0 victory Sunday at Ludwig Field. Led by Stertzer and his senior teammates, the Terps are trying to advance to the College Cup this season after failing to reach it in each of the past three years.
Taylor Kemp, London Woodberry and John Stertzer arrived in College Park in fall 2009 with a clear expectation: winning championships.
The Terrapins men’s soccer team was the defending national champion. It had made five College Cup appearances in the past seven years. Coach Sasho Cirovski had built a national power.
But three years later, the three seniors have yet to hoist that golden trophy.
The Terps fell in the Elite Eight during their freshman and sophomore years. Last season, they lost to Louisville in the third round — their earliest postseason exit since 2007.
The pain of those defeats, specifically the 4-2 loss to the Cardinals last November, has stayed with Cirovski and his players the past nine months. And as the season opens, it’s clear the No. 9 Terps’ expectations haven’t changed.
“We do have a lot of returning guys back there.”
That process started earlier this summer. Cirovski estimated more than 80 percent of his team lived in College Park, often training two or three times a day.
And for a senior class hoping to avoid being the first group since 1997 to never make the College Cup, the stakes have never been higher.
“We’re contenders every year,” Cirovski said. “But I’ve said before, if we don’t bring at least one championship home this year, whether it’s an ACC or national championship, this will be a failure.”
Those hopes will likely hinge upon the play of their goalkeeping. Sophomore Keith Cardona, redshirt freshman Jordan Tatum and freshman Cody Niedermeier are all battling to replace Will Swaim, who is now the team’s soccer operations director.
All three players competed during the Terps’ exhibition slate, and Cardona earned the start in Sunday’s season-opening 3-0 victory against No. 7 Louisville. Still, Cirovski said last week that he doesn’t expect to name a starter until the middle of the season.
“I’m confident in all three of our keepers,” Woodberry said. “Although they’re freshmen and sophomores, I’d still rank them among the best in the country. … I feel like they’re going to have the supporting players around them that are going to make it easier for them to be successful.”
The Terps will also hope to avoid a rash of injuries, which plagued them at the end of last season. The team went 1-3-2 in its final six games after defenders Alex Lee and Kyle Roach suffered injuries, forcing Cirovski to use a makeshift backline in the postseason.
Of course, the Terps’ schedule won’t help them recover from possible injuries. In addition to Sunday’s matchup with No. 7 Louisville, the Terps host No. 2 UCLA on Friday and California — a team just outside the top 25 — on Sept. 2.
That’s all before the grueling ACC slate starts. The Terps open play at No. 14 Boston College on Sept. 7, and have matchups looming against No. 1 North Carolina, Virginia, Duke and Wake Forest.
But the Terps know that it’s a means to an end. If Kemp, Woodberry, Stertzer and company want their season to end in mid-December at Regions Park in Hoover, Ala., they must emerge from a grueling regular-season schedule.
“We haven’t made a final four,” Woodberry said. “It’s just below the standard of what we’ve wanted to do. I think being seniors, and me, John and Taylor have been such good friends for four years, I think going out on top would be the best gift for all three of us. It would show [the] significance of what we’ve done over the past four years.”
dgallen@umdbk.com
