The Terrapin men’s soccer team isn’t having as much fun as it did earlier in the season.
That’s the major reason head coach Sasho Cirovski gave for the slump the Terps fell into coming into last night’s game against Hartwick.
In the three games before last night, the Terps seemed almost lifeless. They tied North Carolina, got a pounding from Virginia and then unexpectedly lost to Boston College at Ludwig Field.
Against Hartwick, the Terps again played very tensely for most of the game, in front of only 985 fans on what ended up being a dreary, rainy night at Ludwig Field.
But the 1-0 win on a second-half goal against Hartwick might just be the spark to reinvigorate the No. 8 Terps.
“Right now my main priority is to get the smile back on the faces and get the energy that we had in preseason,” Cirovski said. “I think our team has just been tired; some of the energy has been zapped a little bit.”
Throughout the week, Cirovski has tried different things to find a cure for the Terps’ on-the-field lulls.
On Tuesday, Cirovski bent his practice routine just a bit. After the team trained for a few hours in the rain, the coach used a relay race for the team’s final exercise.
The players started with handing the ball off to each other, went to continual headers up the field and finally juggled the ball from one side to the next. The losing team did push-ups.
At the end of it all, the players joked with each other and laughed as they left practice.
“The theme all day today was to come out with a greater level of commitment and intensity, but at the same time to bring back the enthusiasm and the spark that we had earlier in the year,” Cirovski said after the practice. “I wanted to have some fun at the end, because I think maybe we’ve gotten away from having fun.”
In last night’s game, the Terps (11-3-1), for a few moments, showed just a little bit of getting back to having fun.
In the 60th minute, sophomore forward Graham Zusi delivered a corner kick that found the head of junior midfielder Maurice Edu, who sent it into the back of the net.
“It’s similar to the other one against Duke,” Edu said of his third game-winner of the season.
The goal did resemble the last two times the Terps won – once against Duke, like Edu said, and once against Loyola. Both goals were game-winners.
But just after the energetic moment of Edu’s goal last night, the remnants of an uptight Terp team partly resurfaced. They didn’t really celebrate the goal.
“At times, we’re just taking things a little bit too serious,” Edu said. “We gotta just relax and just play and let the game come to us and just enjoy it.”
After the game, the lack of celebration is one of the things Cirovski joked with his team about; he told them they need to loosen up.
“I just reminded them that they weren’t even celebrating when they scored the goal,” Cirovski said. “We had a good laugh there and hopefully we’re on our way back to make this enjoyable.”
In the last few minutes of the game, Hartwick (7-8-2) pressured the Terps and almost found the equalizer. But in the end, the Terps won.
And one of the things Cirovski has said a couple times this season is, “When you’re winning, it’s fun.”
If the coach’s old saying rings true, then the win against a non-conference team, although closer than the Terps probably would have liked, was still a win.
Maybe now they can start having more fun.
Contact reporter Bryan Mann at bmanndbk@gmail.com.
