Forgive me for stating the obvious, but everyone loves a winner.
People shower good graces and support on teams when they produce victories, especially in collegiate athletics. One needs to look no further than this year’s football team as proof; a team that has received immense support in their quest for the Atlantic-10 title.
What makes success and prosperity even more triumphant, however, is when a team that is set up for failure defies the odds, and is able to maintain a standard of excellence throughout the season. Who didn’t root for Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher who experienced great success in the major leagues, or Saku Koivu, who led the Canadiens past the Bruins in last year’s playoffs when returning to the ice after overcoming cancer? All anybody wanted was to see those teams do well.
Applied on a local level, that brings one obvious question to mind: why doesn’t support run rampant for NU’s soccer program? No group on campus embodies the true essence of defying the odds better than the men’s and women’s soccer programs.
The men’s team, despite playing almost seven scholarships short of their league competitors in the America East Conference, have locked up the league’s regular season title and host No. 4 New Hampshire Saturday evening at Parson’s Field. This comes after starting the season with three victories in their first 11 contests. Generally speaking, the only players on the squad offered scholarships are those that come from overseas; Nate Houghton, the team’s driven captain and arguably most important player, leads the Huskies without any type of aid.
This season was by no means an aberration. Since 1999, the team has produced a 43-29-4 mark, including three America East playoff appearances and one showing in the conference finals. Unfortunately, many people are unaware of this fact. They get no fan bus and no publicity, in addition to limited funding. That is why you can usually count the number of fans in the stands on your fingers, and not with a calculator.
Still, the women’s tale may be even more impressive. As of last year, the NCAA limit for scholarships was 12; Northeastern competes with about five. The money is divided up into portions, and no woman on the team is the recipient of a full-tuition scholarship. The squad’s starting goal tender, Cynthia Slowik, was a walk-on. Their regular starting lineup consists of predominantly freshmen and sophomores. One player, Andi Matthews, is out for the season after tearing her MCL against Boston University. Another talented player, Kim Cochrane, died tragically before the season even started. The team took nearly a month and a half to win their first conference victory. Nevertheless, they made the conference playoffs for the first time in the program’s eight-year history, going unbeaten in their last five conference games.
If you think support for the men’s team was bad, then you have obviously never experienced a women’s contest. One fan admitted to going only because his girlfriend was on the team, and probably would not attend if she did not participate.
To compensate for insufficient financial support, the teams combine efforts to do much of their programming together. Often times they work 12-hour shifts as security guards at Foxboro Stadium during New England Patriots contests, sometimes immediately following games. Instead of getting paid to play collegiate soccer like most scholar-athletes, they pay for the right to play in their own games.
Still, there is not enough time or energy for them in a day to rally up enough support. That said, I implore all of you to go out to Parson’s Field in Brookline, or make the road trip to the University of Hartford to support Northeastern’s soccer programs. Do not do so out of sympathy; the program appreciates it, but I assure you, they do not need it. Do it because they are performing well, and have maintained a standard of excellence matched by few of the university’s fall programs over the past several seasons. Do it because they have little money to promote themselves. Most importantly, do it because they play for the love of the game more than any program at this school, a fact that gets lost in today’s age of professional drafts and collegiate prima donnas. These people are you, me, the guy down the hall, or the janitor on the ground floor of the Curry Student Center; they are simply people struggling to better themselves and their lives by dealing with the cards that fate has dealt them. They are the perpetual underdogs.
