Volume 67, Issue 3

Soccer Team Picks Up Where It Left Off

by Commentator Staff

October 6^th - The Yeshiva University soccer team played their first game in mid-season form, losing at home to the Manhattanville Valiants 8-0.  Much of the damage was done in the first half, which saw Manhattanville storm out to a 6-0 lead and never look back.  But the real damage was done before the first whistle as Yeshiva fielded a team without defensive stalwart Zev Iversen and Stony Brook transfer and reputed savior David Mitten.

The first half featured stout defense from Yeshiva, interrupted by several glaring errors that resulted in goals.  A midfield giveaway allowed the opposing forward in alone on goalkeeper Avi Mermelstein, who watched with some interest as the ball bounded off the post right back to the charging forward, who obligingly banged home the rebound.  Soon afterwards, the Valiants scored again as Mermelstein made a hash of an attempted clearance.  After a deflected shot found the upper right corner, an unmarked man found the net off a set play on a corner-kick, a Valiant found a rebound in the box, and a sharp-angled shot found its way through a diving attempted save, Yeshiva found itself six goals behind heading into halftime.

In the second half, Manhattanville was largely content to maintain possession and prevent the Yeshiva substitutes from ruining goalie Jason Moskowitz’s clean sheet.  With Yeshiva unable to string a few passes together through the midfield, the shutout was never seriously threatened.  Yeshiva finished without a single shot on goal.

In the loss, starting left midfielder Andre Ghighi sprained his ankle and was unable to play in the Wednesday game versus the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA).  While Iversen would return to the lineup after missing the first game due to a prior commitment, Mitten will not play for the team this season.  Mitten, a starter on Division I Stony Brook, discovered that he would have to pay for medical insurance and opted to sit out.

The October 9th night game at King’s Point, versus the USMMA, ended with the same score line as the first game’s.  The Marines, with uncanny precision, put up six goals in the first half and two in the second.  Having scored six goals in the first thirty minutes of the first half, they proceeded to play keep-away from Yeshiva in their own end for the remainder of the half, without even attempting to score until the final seconds.  For the second half, the Marines darkened the scoreboard that had kept time and score on the well-lit football field throughout the first half.  The reason for this maneuver became apparent as the second half wore on—after the USMMA mostly played a possession game, tacking on only two more goals in the second half, the half came to an abrupt end fifteen minutes earlier than the scheduled forty-five minutes.  The coaches and referees had decided that the humiliation had gone on too long and had put an end to an especially easy practice for the Marines and an especially painful soccer lesson for the Maccabees.

This was, in fact, the second time in as many years that the USMMA cut short a blowout game versus Yeshiva; last year the final was 10-0.  In his post-game comments, Yeshiva Head Coach Jack Thelusma made no mention of the shortened half.  Coach Thelusma did, however, tell his team that the USMMA coach had restrained the Marines from scoring more goals and asked the Yeshiva coach why the Maccabees did not play in a lower division.  As the soccer team currently exists for the purpose of fulfilling a Skyline Conference rule that requires a member university to enter a team in three team sports (in Yeshiva’s case: basketball, volleyball, and soccer), the suggestion seems impractical, though Coach Thelusma seemed to greet it with enthusiasm.

Yeshiva’s on-field incompetence was matched only by its inept off-the-field preparations.  Besides the difficulty in obtaining medical insurance for various team members, the team found itself caught in a numbers game before departing for the first two games, trying to fit 25 players onto a 21-person-capacity bus.  Athletic Director Dr. Richard Zerneck accompanied the team to the bus that would take it to King’s Point and seemed surprised at the disparity in numbers.  In both cases, the extra team members used alternate means of transportation to arrive at the same blowout.

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