Heartbreak might be the best word to describe the University of Tampa men’s soccer team’s season opener this year.
UT went up against the University of Montevallo on Sept. 3 in Columbus, GA.
The Spartans took the early lead with a goal by junior midfielder Ryan Griffin, with sophomore Kemal Malcolm picking up his first career point at Tampa. Montevallo did not relent as it tied the game soon after.
The two teams ended up playing into not one, but two overtimes and, with 39 seconds left on the clock in the second OT, Montevallo put one past Tampa goalkeeper David Niepel to seal the victory and give UT its first loss on the season.
The squad returned to the pitch two days later only to defeat Georgia Southwestern State University in a 1-0 battle.
The lone goal came in the 72nd minute with freshman Alex Knaggs as the goal scorer and senior Jordan Moses with the assist.
Niepel started in goal once again playing the full 90 minutes and collecting one save.
On Sept. 7, UT faced No.13 University of the Incarnate Word who, at the time, had a record of 2-0 on the season.
After a calm first half, tensions flared in the second. Incarnate Word scored the first goal in the 58th minute as the game-playing became increasingly difficult.
University of Tampa’s David Gulec had the second goal in the match to even the score at 1-1. With five minutes left, Incarnate Word responded with another goal that would ultimately lead to their victory. In the second half alone three yellow cards were issued – one to a Tampa player and two to players of Incarnate Word.
Additionally, a red card was given out to a member of Incarnate Word for punching midfielder Alex Knaggs after an altercation took place between the two teams which unfortunately did not end with the usual pushing and shoving.
There was only 1:22 left on the clock at the time of the punch and the injury Knaggs endured was severe enough for him to have to leave the game.
“We’ve made a slow start,” said sophomore Dominic Goncalves. “The losses we’ve suffered have been hard to take given the circumstances they’ve occurred in.”
Although these losses were hard for the men’s team to undergo, it will remain to work hard as the season progresses.
“[The team] still has certain things we need to work on and improve, but we’re all putting in the work, and as long as we keep that up then we feel like we will have a successful season,” Goncalves said.
Although UT has had a slow lost to its season Coach Adrian Bush remains optimistic.
“[We] remain very encouraged by the start of the season even though we have dropped two of our first three games to nationally ranked opponents,” he said.
Tampa embraced this encouragement and made a trip on September 10 to Miami to play Johnson and Wales University.
The game was a blow-out with Tampa scoring 12 goals and shutting out JWU. Griffin started the goal-scoring a little over ten minutes into the game.
Malcolm had his first Tampa hat-trick in the game while Brian Fekete, Lister Warren and Griffin each had two goals. Other goal-scorers included Dominic Goncalves, Brock Jennings and Juan Rivas.
The team improved to 3-2 on the year after a 1-0 victory against Florida Memorial on Sept. 14. Junior midfielder Ryan Griffin scored the only goal of the game. Lister Warren assisted Griffin on the play.
The Spartans will take on Webber International University on Sept. 21, a team they shutout a year ago en-route to a 1-0 victory.
Maya Todd can be reached at mtodd@spartans.ut.edu.