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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports men's soccer

Despite Indiana-Akron ties, Yeagley doesn’t see a rivalry

Assistant coaches under famed former Indiana Coach Jerry Yeagley helped the Indiana men’s soccer program hoist the national championship trophy in both 2003 and 2004. Coaches Todd Yeagley and Caleb Porter returned only a few years after graduating to help their alma mater capture College Cup titles, which had eluded both men during their stints as leaders of the Hoosier soccer team.

Last fall Porter, now the head coach at Akron, took up what had become a familiar trophy. But it was Yeagley, now the head coach at Indiana, who proved to be a stepping stone to Porter’s success. Porter’s Zips won a hard-fought 2-1 game against the Hoosiers, sending an old friend packing, en route to a 2010 Men’s Soccer National Championship.

Yet even in defeat and with the dense connections between Porter, Yeagley and the IU program, Yeagley sees no rivalry between the Hoosiers and Akron.

“They’ve had a good team and had a good run at it last year, and they’ve even had good teams in the past with some tradition,” Yeagley said. “But not as much as our program.”

Even as defending national champions and two-time defending College Cup finalists, Yeagley feels Akron may not be the team to beat this year.

“They’ve had some great players go through the past two years, but they lost a lot of players after last season,” Yeagley said. “They’re certainly capable, but we won’t focus on them. There are more and more teams each year that can win the championship, and championship teams can take form in many different ways. We’re still trying to find that form here.”

It’s a form that will include several new players, including seven incoming freshmen and junior Aris Zafeiratos, a transfer from Bryant and Stratton College. After last season, IU lost four graduating seniors and leading scorer Will Bruin, who was drafted by the Houston Dynamo of the MLS. Redshirt junior Luis Soffner felt like the team needed a bit of a change.

“I think last year we didn’t seem very united, and at times there were individuals who put themselves before the team,” Soffner said. “This year we’re very team-oriented. We’re trying to help each other rather than yelling at each other for mistakes, and I think in practice we’ve looked really good.”

The returning players, who helped Yeagley win a Big Ten Championship and reach the third round of the NCAA tournament in his first year as head coach, have come back to Bloomington this season without a sense of defeat. The realization that they could play toe-to-toe with the eventual national champions seems to have made Yeagley’s players more confident going into this season, including redshirt junior Joe Tolen.

“Anything can happen in a tournament. We know that Akron is a quality team — they went on to win the national championship — and had extremely talented players, but we don’t like to say they were better than us at all,” Tolen said. “And that loss was no different than another. Playing for IU, anytime you go out in the Sweet 16 you’re proud to make it that far, but there’s always going to be disappointment that we didn’t go further. And losing in general gives us that edge, that want to succeed next year.”

That “want” is just what Yeagley is looking for. The coach, whose father is the winningest coach in NCAA men’s soccer history, brought six national championships to Indiana in his 31-year tenure. The younger Yeagley grew up around a winning tradition. He was on staff for two championships in 2003 and 2004, and he knows what it takes.

“We’ve got to have players perform when the lights are on and the stage is there,” Yeagley said. “We’ve got to have players step up and take that responsibility and thrive in it, want it. We’ve got to get that swagger back, and it’s not there yet, but we’re working on it.”

At the end of last season, it was Akron and Porter who had that swagger. They raised the College Cup after defeating Louisville in Santa Barbara, Calif.

But the Hoosiers’ game two weeks prior showed Yeagley’s players that with hard work and motivation, there’s no reason that couldn’t be them in the future.

“We gave them a battle, an absolute battle, and it could have gone either way, but it was theirs that day,” Yeagley said. “But it showed our players that we can play at that competitive level. We just need a heck of a lot of preparation and difference makers to step up when it’s time to do that.”

The team that lost four seniors and Will Bruin was incorrectly listed. The IDS regrets this error.

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