As the UW men's soccer season came to an end last winter, with a 10-8-1 overall record, the program had once again become stable since its decline after the 1995 NCAA championship season. This quickly changed, however, after the resignation of Head Coach Kalekeni Banda in early January.
Enter Maryland's top assistant coach, Jeff Rohrman. In less then a month, Rohrman replaced Banda as head coach and now must fill Banda's shoes.
His first order of business was hiring two new assistants, Jon Szczepanski and Nick Pasquarello. Rohrman then proceeded to implement his coaching style on a young and inexperienced Badger team.
\The team is responding to the coach,"" senior forward Valentine Anozie said. ""I think Coach Rohrman has done very well in introducing himself to Wisconsin life and Wisconsin soccer.""
The players are also responding well to the new system and coaching. The team is more upbeat than last year's squad and the program has a newfound sense of energy within the program, that had been lacking in recent years.
""There's new life to the program,"" sophomore goalkeeper Eric Hanson said. ""Everyone is excited and people come to practice excited and are ready to play. There's a lot more excitement in the program and in the players' eyes.""
Rohrman is hoping that this new energy will help the team move forward and believes the team is responding positively to his philosophy of coaching.
""When you look at [the team], they are working hard,"" Rohrman said, ""They are enjoying it'the enthusiasm, [the] energy and [the] passion that they are playing with is reflective of what I want to bring here ... and that's all I can ask for.""
The team demonstrated its hard work throughout the weekend, as they dominated at the Rocky Rococo Classic.
Friday evening's game started off slowly with Anozie scoring the lone goal in the first half, but things picked up as the Badgers came together to score another three in the last half of the game. Sophomore forward David Martinez, sophomore forward Nick Van Sicklen and junior forward Watson Vaughan Prather each netted goals for Wisconsin in the second half.
Sunday's game proved to be a much larger challenge as the Badgers were worn from playing Friday night's game and Florida Atlantic matched up better in size, making it a more physical game. Martinez came through once again and scored the only goal for Wisconsin, who won the Classic, going 2-0.
""[The team was] hoping to get two wins, and my concern is how well we played and if we play well, I think the results are going to come,"" Rohrman said. ""I thought Friday we played extremely well, maybe we didn't finish as well as we should have, [but] today it was more physically, mentally and emotionally challenging ... because to turn around and play two soccer games in less then 48 hours is extremely demanding. It's not the most attractive game on a Sunday after you've played on a Friday. [But] I told the guys, it comes down to showing heart and character ... and I think they did [that] really well.""
