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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports men's soccer

Hoosiers work to overcome loss of Bruin to Houston Dynamo

Men's soccer vs. UCLA

IU men’s soccer’s hopes of defending their Big Ten championship took a sizable hit Dec. 29, 2010, when their leading scorer, junior Will Bruin, decided to forego his senior season and pursue a career in Major League Soccer.

On Jan. 13, he was selected No. 11 overall by the Houston Dynamo.

Bruin, who had 18 goals last season, provided almost half of his team’s offensive production of 37 goals. He was a force both on and off the field, and IU Coach Todd Yeagley said the team will greatly miss him this season.

“The biggest thing he gave our team was confidence,” Yeagley said. “You knew as a teammate and as a coach that he was just one play away from changing the game with one goal, and he was an excellent passer as well. He made others better on the field, and we’re still working on filling the void of his dominant personality.”

Junior goalkeeper Luis Soffner played with Bruin for two seasons and said the pair were good friends, but it was Bruin’s passion that made teammates admire his play on the field.

“He brought this presence that no one else had,” Soffner said. “He almost played mean, and he had that desire and passion to win. You could almost see that fire in his eyes. When he played a tough team or wasn’t playing well, it fueled him, and everyone else kind of fed off him.”

At the end of the game, whether his team was ahead, tied or even behind, Bruin’s teammates said they could count on him to make a play when it meant the most. Bruin scored three game-winning goals last season.

“It gave us confidence, knowing that we had a guy who could make it happen at the end of the game if we needed a goal,” junior Joe Tolen said. “The confidence we had, knowing we had a player like him, made us a force to be reckoned with every time we stepped on the field.”

Because he provided more than a third of the team’s points and almost half the goals, Bruin’s potential off-nights caused problems for the team, Yeagley said.

“That’s what always worried me,” Yeagley said. “If Will wasn’t in form that night, the whole team lost confidence in big moments. We weren’t as much of a balanced team as we needed to be last year, but now we’ve got three to five guys who we feel could get a goal any night, and that does help.”

The prospect that Yeagley could have a team of three to five confident scorers, plus Bruin’s production, had him very excited for the 2011 season, even after the Hoosiers fell last year 2-1 to eventual national champion Akron in round 16 of the NCAA tournament.

But it looked likely Bruin might leave prematurely.

After last season, many mock drafts had him being selected in the top 10, and some even as the second or third pick.

Few players ever have the hype Bruin received, and it put Yeagley in a tough position as a coach.

“It’s tough because I’m held to make Indiana successful and help my athletes achieve goals,” Yeagley said. “Will was at the top of the heap and had a fabulous year and a good opportunity to pursue.”

It’s an opportunity Bruin has taken in stride. Since becoming the first Dynamo rookie to ever start on opening day back in March, Bruin has appeared in 21 of the team’s 26 games, recording four goals and one assist.

Three of those goals came in a single game on April 29 against D.C. United.
There he became the first Dynamo rookie to record a hat trick and the second youngest MLS player to do so, gaining Player of the Week accolades for his performance.

Bruin and his Dynamo teammates will step on the field again Aug. 27, the same day that his former Hoosier teammates will play their first regular season game without him on the field.

For Bruin, it will likely be just another day in his first season that has made him a contender for Rookie of the Year.

For Yeagley and his players, it will be a day of answering questions and beginning to fill the massive gap Bruin left behind.

“With a player like Will, he’s impossible to replace,” Tolen said. “There’s no way we’re going to have one guy score 18 goals for us this season. His presence is definitely going to be missing from this team — I mean, he’s one of the best players in the country — but we’re confident that we can get a combination of different players and pick up right where we left off.”

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