After losing 11 straight games to start to the season, Winthrop men’s soccer has only lost one of their last five. Eagles head coach Daniel Ridenhour a number of explanations of this late season surge.
“The shift was we shook the team up. We put a freshman in goal who hadn’t played a minute. Gareth Shaw who’s done really well. We gave an opportunity to a couple of guys in the back. One probably the most significant was Kalani Harris, who hadn’t played at all this year for us, and he’s a new player, he’s been rock solid since he’s gotten an opportunity. Patrick B. up front, came on and has done well.” Paolo Tedesco and Valentin Haemmerle were also mentioned as tone-setters who contributed to winning when they were inserted.
Shaw in particular played very well, accumulating 22 saves over the course of three games. For his performance, Shaw was named Big South defensive rookie of the week, and defensive player of the week, consecutively.
Winthrop men’s soccer’s recent winning has been in spite of an extremely tough schedule that at one point was ranked first in the country in terms of strength of schedule. “Our opponents were obviously very good. We played four or five nationally ranked teams.” Not only that, but when the Eagles began conference play, they were greeted by three of the four best teams in the big south record-wise, including the conference leading Campbell Camels. Ridenhour even described the trio of High Point, Gardner-Webb, and Campbell as “the top three teams”.
In addition to the high level of competition, Winthrop also played their first six games on the road. “It’s really difficult to win on the road in college soccer, or in any college sport,” Ridenhour said.
Ridenhour also credits the Eagles’ wins to a strategic change he made. “We changed to a 4-4-2 which is very structured and simplistic. So that was kind of how we played against Longwood. We go to Asheville and we play the same way in a 4-4-2. We’re unlucky not to score two or three more goals at Asheville.”
Winthrop has one game left on its schedule Wednesday night at Presbyterian College.
