Terriers Travel To Virginia Looking for NCAA Soccer Win

When the St. Francis Brooklyn men’s soccer team takes on #23 Old Dominion (12-6-1) at 7 p.m. tonight in Norfolk, Virginia in the first round of the NCAA Division I Championship Cup, the Terriers are not expecting an early exit.

They’re planning to stay for a while by leaving Virginia with a win.

“A win would be amazing,” said St. Francis head coach Tom Giovatto as his team boarded the bus leaving from Brooklyn. ”We think we’re going to give [Old Dominion] a good game and hopefully we’re going to get the result and then we’ll move on from there.”

It’s been almost forty year since the last time St. Francis won an NCAA match; in 1978 the Terriers won in the first two rounds before losing to Clemson 4-0 in the third.

Coming off their second consecutive Northeast Conference (NEC) title, and sixth in program history, St. Francis boasts a stellar defense anchored by senior defender Andy Cormack and junior netminder Jack Binks. This season the Terriers hope to go where few NEC teams in any sports have gone before: the second round of the NCAAs.

The last NEC soccer squad to make an impression in the NCAAs was Farleigh Dickinson, which in 2012 advanced all the way to the third round before losing in overtime to defending national champion North Carolina.

Last year the Terriers lost 1-0 to Penn State in the opening round of the Men’s Soccer Championship.

St. Francis (11-5-4) comes in on a roll, having gone 11-1-3 after after opening the season with losses in four of five matches. Goalie Binks has registered ten shutouts on the season, including three in the Terriers’ last four games. One more shutout will tie the junior from Darlington, England with Dragan Radovich (1978) and Mario Fava (1988) for the program’s single season record.

Then there’s co-captain Andy Cormack. Dubbed “Captain Clutch” because of his tendency to come up big in NEC Championship matches—the senior from Plymouth, England has hit for the golden goal in overtime in the last two NEC title games—Cormack is a key performer who is playing the best ball of his Terrier career at the perfect moment.

Tonight’s match between the Terriers and the Monarchs will be streamed free tonight beginning at 7 p.m. at odusports.com.

PHOTO CAPTION: 2014 NEC Men’s Soccer Championship banner hanging at St. Francis
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Randazzo for Patch