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Don't look now
Men's soccer will surprise many by challenging for a title
By Jimmy Lemke
October: that was when the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee Panthers won their first match of last season. They went winless through their first eight games on their way to a mediocre 5-12-3 record. Sure, they went 5-4-2 from October on, but that first month was a depressing one.
Jon Coleman was feeling his way around during his second year in the head coaching position. Players were leaving or on the fence all the time. And it didn't end pretty -- an overtime loss to their archrival, the UIC Flames, was like taking a Craig Mallace headbutt to the chest.
They lost several key players, such as Colin Baker and senior Zeke Dombrowski, ending 10 straight years that Dombrowski has started for Milwaukee, and a good long while until younger brother Quinn gets to campus.
This season, no one is expecting good things. And that's why Milwaukee is going to make a run at the conference championship.
No one in the conference thinks Jon Coleman can coach. The problem last year might have been Bob Spielmann, the former Marquette high school coach who has about a thousand state titles and someone who didn't appear happy playing second fiddle to a second-year coach. Coleman also had to contend with a roster made up mostly of his former boss Louis Bennett's recruits.
Not the case this year. Spielmann is gone, and the roster is made up of players loyal to Coleman, most of which were recruited by the third-year coach. They're anchored by two dynamic goalkeepers in Ryan Germann and Grant Fernstrum, neither of whom will be letting many goals by this season.
Another reason for optimism is found in the box scores over the season. Of their 12 losses, Milwaukee lost an amazing 10 of them by one goal. If you swing those goals over to the Panthers, which would be very simple in soccer, you’d be looking at a team that would have been 15-2-3. You can bet the farm that the Panthers won't want another tie with Marquette and Wisconsin, as they did last year.
One needs to look no further than the last game they played that mattered. UIC, forever the juggernaut in Horizon League soccer, was on their way to an Elite Eight finish in the NCAA Tournament. That never would have happened, however, if UWM would have prevailed when the two teams met in the Horizon League Tournament. It took one of the eight best teams in the country more than 90 minutes to beat Milwaukee, an overtime victory that showed the mettle of the black and gold.
This year's underclassmen look promising. Another year under the belts of Germann and Fernstrum makes the new Panthers pretty formidable at this point. The replacement of Bob Spielmann with Jesse Rosen on the coaching staff seems to be working. In two exhibition matches thus far (The Drake Invitational this past weekend took place after we went to print), Milwaukee blanked the No. 21 team in the nation 1-nil, and stomped a hole in D-III UW-Whitewater.
So don't forget to make your way over to the pitch this fall, because you might just see some champions in the making.
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