Sometimes all it takes is a standout performance from your star player. Other times it’s just taking a respite from the rigors of Big East action. And sometimes it’s a little bit of both. Led by senior co-captain Ricky Schramm’s three goals, the Georgetown men’s soccer team snapped a four-game losing streak and trounced on the visiting Howard Bison 5-0 Tuesday afternoon.
“It was a big win just to get ourselves back in the win column,” Head Coach Brian Wiese said after the game. “We always say, ‘Winning is a habit [and] losing is a habit’ and at the end of the day we broke a [losing] habit, and now we have to make winning a habit.”
The two squads played back and forth for the first 20 minutes, but once Schramm cracked through Bison junior keeper Chris Taylor in the 21st minute, the floodgates were open as Georgetown (4-8-0, 2-5-0 BE) matched their total offensive output from the last six games combined. Schramm stole the ball from a Howard (2-9-1, 0-2-0 ASC) defender on the right side of the box, made a move and deposited the ball into the lower left corner for his sixth goal of the season.
But Schramm wasn’t done. Less than four minutes later, the Hoyas’ leading goal scorer tapped a free kick from 20 yards out back to senior midfielder Daniel Grasso and then broke to the goal. A touch pass from Grasso found Schramm in the box, who put Georgetown up 2-0 by placing the ball in the bottom right corner of the net.
Schramm would conclude his scoring barrage in the 71st minute on an unassisted tally, taking the ball down the left side and flicking it off the outside of his right foot to beat the goalie to the right post. The effort was Schramm’s 11th multi-goal game of his career and his second career hat trick, the other coming exactly two years earlier, on Oct. 3, 2004 against Syracuse in a 3-2 Georgetown win.
“That’s an understatement, yeah,” Schramm said when asked about the possibility of scoring 10 goals on the day if some of his other seven shots found their way into the back of the net. “We came out today pretty positive, like we’ve been since we got in this little rut. The whole thing was about getting that first goal. We got it early enough, so the rest of the game we were fighting for the second, third and fourth which come easier.”
“I forgot to tell [my team] about [Schramm’s] one-on-one abilities,” Howard Head Coach Keith Tucker said of the hat trick Schramm put up against his team. “We saw him play during the beginning of the season [in the D.C. College Cup] and he really looked good. I’m surprised he hasn’t scored more goals because he is an excellent striker.”
With goals added by sophomore forward Richard Frank and first-year midfielder Scott Larrabee, the Hoyas tallied five goals in a game for the second time this season, the first time they’ve accomplished that feat since 6-2 and 5-4 victories over George Washington and Syracuse in 1998. More importantly, the win gives the Hoyas an added boost heading into the final stretch of their Big East schedule.
“We definitely needed a game like this, getting everyone in and scoring lots of goals” senior keeper Andrew Keszler said of the offensive explosion. “We needed a mental lift and hopefully this gives us a little bounce going into our last games.”
Georgetown will try to keep its newfound momentum as they head to South Bend, Indiana to take on Wiese’s former team, No. 8 Notre Dame (8-3-2, 5-2-0 BE) at noon on Saturday.
“I have to take it as business as usual,” Wiese said of the upcoming match. “I know those guys quite well, and I certainly wish them the best in every game of the year but this one.”
