By Charlie Leffler
At the beginning of the season, Louisville men’s soccer coach Tony Colavecchia knew that his team was going to be good. What he did not know was that it might take him a while to get all his key players on the field at one time. “I predicted that this team could do well,” said the coach. “I knew that we had the talent, and I knew that we had the right arrangement of players. What I didn’t forecast was having all these injuries.”
On August 31, eight minutes into the first game of the season, leading scorer Simon Bird suffered a broken collarbone. Louisville regrouped the following day to beat IUPUI 3-2, but they would only pick up one more win until Bird returned nearly a month and a half later.
With Bird unable to play, the Cards turned to a batch of talented newcomers for support. “Every day, we had to live on the edge,” said Colavecchia. “Every day, we’ve had to come and play.” After defeating UNC-Asheville on September 9 and moving to 2-2, the Cards would not win another game for another month and a half, falling to 2-8-2.
The bright spot during the stretch was the Louisville defense. Over the ten-game span, the Cards gave up a total of 12 goals. Of those ten games, four ended regulation in a scoreless tie. Most impressive was a 0-0 tie at then No. 3 ranked South Carolina.
Offense was a different story altogether. In the ten-game stretch, Louisville only scored in one game, a 3-2 loss at ECU.
With the high preseason expectations and the long losing streak, it was difficult for Colavecchia to keep the team’s morale up. “We went through a stretch where I felt like I was riding a horse that hadn’t been broken,” said the coach. “I kept getting on it and kept getting thrown off again. We were determined to just get back on the horse and find a way to do this. It got very frustrating. The players got frustrated because they couldn’t see the results on the pitch, and I just had reassure them that it would come about, because of the narrow losses that they had.”
“Watching from the sidelines was difficult,” said junior Bird. “We were playing well; we just couldn’t get the wins. I think our confidence with all of the losses got down a little bit. We always believed in each other. We always had confidence. We just needed that one win to get us going.”
On October 19, six weeks after he had been forced to the sideline, Bird returned and made his impact felt. Playing in only the final eight games, Bird tied Grant for the most goals on the team. More importantly, the results changed in the “win” column. After tying UAB and falling at Marquette, Louisville closed out the season with a six-game winning streak. Over the course of those games, the Cards scored 15 goals to their opponents’ three. In the previous 14 games, U of L had scored a total of nine goals.
Remarkably, the Cards finished 8-10–2 and 3rd in C-USA, which was their highest finish ever.
The road will get no easier for Louisville; they are set to face No. 6 seed UAB, a team they have never defeated, in the conference tournament. If they win, they will most likely face host Saint Louis on their home field. If this season has proven anything, however, these Cards will not back down from adversity.
