It didn’t take long for the men’s soccer team to right the ship following a down season.
The 2017-18 Tommies finished with a record of 1-9-2, last in the ACAA.
Fast forward to the 2018-19 season and you have a final record of 7-2-3, good for second in the ACAA and a trip to CCAA Nationals. Their first trip in 18 years.
“Our success this season was a testament to the hard work we put into training and a huge improvement in attitude and leadership over the past 2 years,” said head coach John-Ryan Morrison. “Of course, it helped we had a great recruiting class, but you just have to look at the ACAA award winners to see that it was the returning players that stepped up to get us to where we are now.”
Morrison is referring to a pair of 3rd year players, John Hunter (Fredericton, NB) and Kyle Yearwood (Bridgetown, Barbados) who were named 1st Team All-Conference and 4th years, Eric Prior (Gananoque, ON) and James Hill (Rothesay, NB) and rookie George Tzimas (Toronto, ON) who were named to the 2nd Team All-Conference. Yearwood was also named a CCAA All-Canadian and Morrison was the ACAA’s Coach of the Year.
The entire Tommies squad is eligible to return for next year, so the future looks bright.
“We will again have the best defensive unit in the league next year, but we need to create and score more goals. Our back 6 did their job and now we need the front 5 to do theirs,” said Morrison on what the team needs to do next year to take the next step.
The season just finished, but Morrison is already looing forward to next year, having tasted CCAA Nationals this year.
“It all depends on how much work they put in at the gym and on the pitch between now and August 23rd,” said Morrison. “Some boys came into camp really fit while others came into camp not meeting my expectations of a university athlete, and we saw the physicality gap hurt us when we got to Nationals. Teams were stronger and faster than us more so than we were out skilled.”
The Tommies will take their off season to train and will come back stronger for the 2019-20 season.