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Exit Stage Left: Lion Bears Down
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 29, 2007
One Columbia player went from worst to first this season. All he had to do was switch schools and teams.
Current Brown junior Will Lee was on the Columbia soccer team last season. Lee was a role player, appearing in 12 games as a sophomore and chipping in one goal. After transferring to our Ivy rival, Lee played a similar role, starting four games in the backfield for the Brown Bears. Only difference? While Lee’s 2006 team went 0-5-2 in league play, the midfielder/defender’s 2007 squad went a perfect 6-0-0.
I don’t know enough about the situation to make judgments on the parties. The dealings between Lee and the soccer team and Lee’s reasons for transfer are purely their business. However, I still find it fascinating that a player could play the same role on teams with such different fortunes. Shouldn’t Brown’s undefeated side be more
talented than our winless side? Well, that requires an examination of the word “talent” at our level.
It would be ludicrous to say that natural talent and ability doesn’t play a factor in athletics. You may not want to be LeBron James like the commercial says, but I think you and I would have a hard time succeeding even if we did. Some professional athletes can do things no one else can. The same is probably true of higher level college athletics. But what about when you get down to the level of the Ivy League? The question is a bit harder to answer. It’s true that the Ancient Eight is definitely a serious athletics conference. Yale’s football team has an NFL-worthy tailback, and our soccer team has a midfielder who captained the U.S. under-15 national team. Neither team has seen much recent success against the competition.
At the same time, however, Bob Shoop was able to guide a football team that went 0-7 in league play to a 3-4 league record in 2003, and Joe Jones accomplished a similar feat with the basketball team later in the same year. It certainly makes you wonder how much of success consists of fitness, emotion, and luck. Rotten luck robs teams every week. Emotion carries sides that are running on fumes. Talented players slip through the cracks every year, either trained or used incorrectly.
A reexamination of our original question through these lenses yields some interesting questions. How many balls bounced the way of the opposition during men’s soccer’s last two seasons? How demoralized was the team with loss after loss mounting? And how many players just didn’t fit into head coach Leo Chappel’s system, and thus were not able to contribute to their potential? Is some of the talent there and restructuring itself half of the job?
If the above statements hold some water—and I suspect they do—it should cheer up not only followers of the men’s soccer team, but Columbia athletics fans in general. Every year, coaches change strategies, staffs change personnel, new players come in, and morale is renewed. Who knows? Perhaps Columbia’s soccer players can go from worst to first without changing teams.
Charles Young is a SEAS junior majoring in applied mathematics.
Sports@columbiaspectator.com
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Columbia players can go from worst to first without changing teams but something else has to change. Luck of the bounce always play apart, however many believe including myself that you make your own luck. Brown and Dartmouth every year are contending for the Ivy Title, are they the luckiest team in the Ivies? We all know the answer to that question. Nevertheless, lets give luck the benefit of the doubt and in truth it can definitely have a factor. However the 2007 season couldn't have been saved if the Lions ate lucky charms every morning for breakfast.
Looking at the past seasons and comparing them to the 2007 season we can see certain similarities and differences that are worth examining. This past season Columbia faced one of its strongest non-conference schedules ever. Facing Virginia, Defending Champions UC Santa Barbara, 4th ranked Brown, 15th ranked Harvard and 22nd Ranked Dartmouth. Similarly in 2004 the Lions schedule was of comparable stregth, where they faced, Duke, New Mexico and UC Santa Barbara. All three teams made it to the NCAA Final Four, Santa Barbara making it to the Championship game. Duke and Santa Barbara were ranked #1 in the nation at one point and New Mexico was ranked as high as #3 in the nation. Another similarity was the overall records, 2007: 3-13-1, 2004: 4-12-1. Very similar records however the differences are seen in the ivy record as well as the scoresheet. I don't have the exact details but in 2004 the Lions lost 5-1 to UCSB, 3-1 to New Mexico and 1-0 to Duke. They also lost 2-0 to Penn but other than that all other games were lost by no less than 1 goal. Luck could have played a factor in these games where they lost by 1 goal. In the 2007 season, Columbia lost 5-0 to Virginia, 4-0 to Northeastern, 5-1 to UCSB, 4-1 to Yale and 5-1 to Harvard. They also lost 3-1 to Adelphi. In 2007 luck couldn't have saved Columbia soccer, not in the Ivies or non conference.
In 2007 Columbia was outscored 18-45 by their opponents. In 2006 where Columbia's record was 7-8-2 Columbia was even in scoring with their opponents 23-23. In 2005 where Columbia's record was 4-12-1, comparable to 07. They were outscored by their opponenst 11-21, however they lost only 3 games by more than 1 goal, losing by 2 goals in those contests. In these seasons one could argue that luck could have played a significant factor in the Men's soccer's demise as they were only losing by 1 goal. In 2007 we were no match for our opponents. Will Lee is testimony to the fact that we have good players on the Columbia roster however the system at Columbia is seriously flawed. Losing by 3 and 4 goals to any team in the ivies or not is unacceptable. Hopefully 2008 will bring some luckier days but if we haven't changed somethign esle we will still end up on the losing end.
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