History in the making:
Men's soccer ranked ninth in the nation

By Chris Nicolini
Sports Editor

The UNCP men’s soccer team is currently ranked ninth in the nation for men’s Division II soccer programs. With a 10-1 overall record, the team is ranked second in the Southeast region behind USC- Spartanburg.

This year’s squad has scored more goals in their first 10 games, 43 of them, than they scored all of last season when the team recorded only 28. The Braves have allowed only four goals and compiled an astounding .226 shot percentage. Simply put, the team scores one goal for every four or five shots they take, while their opponents are held to a .05 shot percentage,
scoring on the Braves about once every 20 shots.

Now in his 24th year behind the reins of the men’s program, Head
Coach Mike Schaeffer has been hard at work preparing for this
successful season.

“Coach Schaeffer knows what he’s doing,” said senior goalkeeper
Alex Hall. “He’s a very good administrator to our program. He
knows the players very well. Excellent coaching and greater depth
has a whole lot to do with our success.”

The addition of Graduate Assistant Men’s Soccer Coach Marco
Geneehas also benefited the squad. Genee holds a DFB (German
Soccer Federation) “B” coaching license, and is currently working
toward his M.A. in Physical Education with a concentration in
Sports Management. Genee hails from Bremen, Germany and has
had experience playing professional ball.

“Marco pushes us extremely hard. He doesn’t accept anything but perfection, he’s not even pleased with close to perfection,” Hall said.

“Having him (Marco) allows me to do what I do best, which is to help fine tune individual players and we give each other a sounding board for our ideas about how and who to play,” Schaeffer said. “Obviously his presence made the Germans much more comfortable about coming to UNCP.”

The squad worked hard during the off-season preparing for their challenging schedule. Adding nine international student-athletes gave the Braves additional skills and depth that were missing from previous seasons.

“These (foreign) players have been immersed in soccer all of their lives. This gives them better role models to base their games on, and so they generally read the game a little better than our American players,” Schaeffer said. “However, our American players have lifted their games by playing with other players who play well.”

“During the preseason there was an attitude difference (toward the upcoming season). It felt different, almost like a change in the weather that you can feel,” Hall said.

Despite Hall’s preseason feelings about his teams’ performance, the squad was not expected to have such a stellar season. This “Cinderella” team is enjoying turning the Peach Belt conference on its head.

“Once again we were voted (before the season) to finish last in the Peach Belt Conference,” Hall said. “If you look at coverage of our team now, they use headlines like ‘The magic carpet ride continues as UNCP improves to 5-0, 6-0, 7-0, 8-0’ and so on.”
According to Hall, the only weakness that the team has is that they have been winning. Now that the team is nationally ranked, opponents take note of that and are more apt to come out gunning to topple the undefeated Braves.

“We love the attention we are getting from everybody, but we must stay humble and down to earth,” Hall said.

Crowd support has also helped to fuel the Braves winning ways.

“If informed students get anything out of this article I hope that they see this and come out to more games and really support us because it’s huge for us,” Hall said. “You’ve got eleven guys on the field that are your only friends on the pitch, but then you got all these supporters behind you saying ‘Do it, do it for us, play boys, win for us.’ ”

At the Saturday, Sept. 27 home match, a large group of UNCP students gathered in the bleachers and in the newly constructed parking lot, and loudly, if at sometimes rudely, cheered on the Braves as they defeated Catawba College 3-1.

“If we don’t have the energy to finish the last five minutes of the game, that (students cheering us on) gives us the energy to finish strongly. We feed off of them. We need more fans out there,” Hall said.

Upcoming matches against USC-Spartanburg and Lander University are crucial challenges for the Braves as they vie for the Peach Belt Conference Championship title.

“USC-Spartanburg is the main roadblock for us capturing the Peach Belt Conference championship, besides Lander University,” Hall said.

The squad hosts USC- Spartanburg on Saturday, Oct. 11 and Lander University on Saturday, Oct. 18. Both matches are set for 3:30 p.m.