It is said that defense wins championships. The Georgetown men’s soccer team (1-1-1) has a stout defense, but going into Sunday’s home game against No. 19 UCLA, the Hoya offense had been struggling.
In fact, before Sunday’s game the team had failed to score a goal in two regular season games.
After a relatively uneventful first half, the Bruins received a rude awakening at the start of the second.
“Even in training you could see it was sharpening up,” junior forward Jose Colchao said about the Georgetown offense.
In the 60th minute, the Hoyas finally converted when a free kick by senior captain Mark Zeman set up a beauty of a goal. After the kick and a pass from senior Scott Larrabee, Colchao pounced and headed the ball into the net.
After some healthy defense from a desperate Bruins offense, the Hoyas widened the gap in the 82nd minute after Seth C’deBaca was tackled in the box, resulting in a penalty kick. C’deBaca stepped up and rung a shot off the post and into the goal.
“It was a sigh of relief, and getting that second goal from Seth was huge,” Colchao said.
After the second Hoya goal, the nearly sellout crowd at North Kehoe counted down the final ten seconds as Georgetown finished off the UCLA powerhouse.
Wins such as this would not be possible without the contributions of young talent like freshmen recruit Ian Christianson. The skilled midfielder is the lone freshman starter.
“I didn’t really know how big of a win it was,” Christianson said. “It was a big, big win for the upperclassmen. Some of them were saying it was the biggest win in their careers.”
The same upperclassmen struggled to win big games last year. Head coach Brian Wiese said that last year the Hoyas were a “bubble team,” cracking the national rankings on occasion but never winning big games or making the tournament.
“It’s an important first step,” Wiese said about the win. “UCLA will be a nice resume builder come NCAA tournament time.” However, Wiese was quick to point out that this is just one game, and seasons are not made by one game.
Wiese hopes that the game will be a confidence booster.
“The guys can use this game as a road map on how to beat good teams or win these types of games,” he said. “We had a lot of chances. Jose especially has created a lot of our chances, especially against Adelphi and Cal. The tribute to him is that he kept working, and it paid off.”
Now Wiese is looking for the team to carry the momentum from the win to Davidson, where the Hoyas play two games against Coastal Carolina and UNC Asheville.
“You would love to look back at the end of the year and say that the UCLA win really set us off,” Wiese said.
