Maryland men’s soccer defender Johannes Bergmann earned both the Big Ten’s Co-Offensive and the Defensive Player of the Week honors after scoring two goals and helping the Terps secure two shutouts, the conference announced Tuesday.
Bergmann is the first player in the Big Ten since at least 2010 to garner a share of both the offensive and defensive weekly honors.
Those accolades add to a momentous week for the senior captain — one in which he scored the first two goals of his college career in front of his parents, who were visiting from Germany to watch their son play for the first time as a Terp.
“It’s even better that my parents are still in town. They should stay here,” Bergmann joked after scoring his second goal.
[Read more: Johannes Bergmann’s OT goal gives No. 25 Maryland men’s soccer 1-0 win over No. 24 Yale]
Both goals came on headers to match set-piece deliveries from midfielder Eli Crognale.
Coach Sasho Cirovski said that Bergmann struggled with winning balls in the air early in his career. After making that an emphasis during training, the two goals represented tangible evidence of his improvements in that phase of the game.
“I was always decent in the air with my heading, but not very good,” Bergmann said. “Especially for a defender, you have to be very good in the air with your heading, so I practiced that. … Finally it paid off.”
Aside from converting on two set pieces in Maryland’s two victories, Bergmann also helped coach Sasho Cirovski’s group post two clean sheets against ranked opponents.
These weekly honors are the second and third in Bergmann’s career after he was named a Co-Defensive Player of the Week in September 2017, just a month into his college career.
