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Despite loss, Roadrunners hold their own vs. Rapids
For you, Tuesday was a new setting, a new set of circumstances. You were out of your element, but you were eager for the opportunity nonetheless.
Just a few days earlier, you won a friendly against Regis by a score of 4-0. In front of about 100 people.
When you play, you normally play on campus. Not in a stadium. You play in a place called the “Auraria fields.” It sounds more like a city park than a soccer-specific complex. In fact, it is.
All of your classmates (did I mention you’re a college student? No? You’re a college student) are on spring break. But you didn’t go to South Padre Island. You stayed behind.
You did it because you get to play at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, home of the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer. You get to play at night, under the lights, in front of hundreds of fans wearing the colors of the home side. You did it so you could put on your dress blues and dance with that really hot girl that all of the upperclassmen like. It was like going to soccer prom.
But then that hot girl from the senior class goes all Carrie on you.
That’s pretty much what happened to the Metropolitan State College men’s soccer team on Tuesday night in Commerce City. Playing in the Rapids’ annual Burgundy & Blue game, the Roadrunners went toe to toe with their hosts. But when the music stopped, Gregory Richardson and Ross Schunk had scored twice each and the Rapids had won 6-0 in 90 minutes.
Was Metro intimidated by the situation? No.
Despite the final deficit, the score was only 1-0 at the half and only 2-0 until the final 20 minutes or so.
And if that doesn’t illustrate the poise Metro showed, picture this: Nico Colaluca, whom the Rapids featured in a playmaking role, had the ball at his feet and was nearing the Roadrunners’ penalty area in the first five minutes of the game. Right back Pat Laughlin, a junior from Scottsdale, Ariz., stepped directly into Colaluca and lowered his shoulder. Laughlin denied entry to the penalty area to Colaluca, and the midfielder had to play the ball off to a teammate.
But that was nothing. In the second half, Jamey King, a 6-foot-4 center back from Salida, was defending Richardson, who was on the attack. The Guyanese striker had routinely been slipping free from Metro defenders with a series of quick cutback moves. But this time, inside the penalty area, King manhandled his professional counterpart. The two clutched and grabbed at each other for control of the ball, and they both wound up in a heap inside the box. Richardson got up and looked at the near-side linesman in hopes of drawing a foul. The linesman just shook his head.
“He was very quick,” King said. “But after about 80 minutes of that, I was frustrated and was not about to let him get away again.”
And King actually had less to find frustrating about Richardson than many of his teammates. In one stretch in the first half, King forced Richardson off the ball in three consecutives trips into the Rapids’ attacking third.
“We were nervous at first, but you learn to settle in during the first five to 10 minutes or it’s all going to get away from you,” King said.
Yet it was still a daunting task for the team, which finished 8-3-3 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference last season and qualified for the NCAA tournament.
“They were a lot faster and a lot smarter” than Metro’s usual opponents, Laughlin said.
As a side, King added, “They would hold the ball a lot longer than we did. They were more organized. … ”
“And they always had support,” Laughlin said, finishing his teammate’s thought.
That support was formidable. Aside from the four goals by Richardson and Schunk, the Rapids got a 30-yard bomb from Terry Cooke in the 36th minute and an opportunistic strike from Jacob Peterson in the 48th. Peterson, Colaluca, Ciaran O’Brien and Schunk all had a hand in creating some of the Rapids’ goals.
So was it worth it, Roadrunners? Was it worth giving up the sun and sand of spring break for the wind and cold of Commerce City and the pain of losing 6-0?
“Yeah, it was worth the experience,” Laughlin said. “It was worth it to learn what we need to work on as a team.”
Goalkeeper Dominique Griffith agreed.
“It helped expose our weaknesses to us,” he said. “But I hope it also showed off our team to the (younger) players at the stadium who might one day think of coming to Metro.”
MAN OF THE MATCH: The Rapids chose Cooke as their top player. His goal was an absolute blast from the middle of the pitch, the type of shot we should see more of against MLS opponents. And in the 63rd minute, he brought the crowd to its feet with a beautiful piece of skill. He tapped the ball to one side of his defender and ran around the other side. He reunited with the ball on the other side of the defender before crossing the ball dangerously in front of the Metro State net. It was a typically well-placed Cooke cross, but it was, again, the type of individual footwork we’re not used to seeing from Cooke.
METRO’S MAN OF THE MATCH: I’d pick Griffith as the Roadrunners’ standout. He played impeccably for the first 65 minutes or so (before being substituted for), including making four big saves in the first 25 or 26 minutes. King and Laughlin were outstanding on the back line, Steven Emory had what were perhaps Metro’s two strongest shots, and Scott Grode added a 30-yard shot that forced a save from Rapids goalkeeper Preston Burpo.
DENIED: Metro State’s standout senior striker, Kellen Johnson, was painfully quiet during the match. Johnson had one nice display in the 66th minute, when he threaded a beautful pass between defenders and to Mike Martinez on the left wing. Martinez’s shot sailed across the face of Burpo’s goal and wide to the right. King said Johnson had such a quiet night because the Rapids maintained possession so well. ”It was hard for him to make anything happen when we weren’t getting much of the ball,” he said.
IF YOU WERE FOLLOWING ALONG ON TWITTER … I apologize. It got so cold that my laptop computer shut down, despite the fact that it was plugged in to a wall socket. My phone, sitting right next to the laptop, also simply turned off. I had charged both before heading to the stadium. I don’t know what the temperature was, but the wind was brutal.
George Tanner is a former writer and editor for the Rocky Mountain News; the Greeley Tribune; The Daily Independent of Ridgecrest, Calif.; the Durango Herald; and the Boulder Daily Camera. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado and an associate professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver. E-mail him at ColoradoSoccerNow@gmail.com.
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Terry Cooke played well in 2008. I hope to see more of Richardson. Latest Soccer News
Great report! Are there any prospects among the college kids?
kellen johnson is the team’s most-decorated player. i was most impressed with king and laughlin on tuesday. king has the size the pros would be looking for.
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Our goal at ColoradoSoccerNow.com is to cover the sport in this state like no one else, from colleges to the Colorado Rapids, from the W-League to the U.S. men's and women's national teams.
About George: George Tanner fell in love with the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the North American Soccer League while living in the Tampa, Fla., area in the mid-1970s. He got his first taste of newspapering while following the Rowdies every day in the Tampa Tribune, and from there grew the seeds of a journalism career in which he has worked at the Colorado Springs Sun; the Daily Camera in Boulder; the Durango Herald; The Daily Independent in Ridgecrest, Calif.; the Greeley Tribune; and the Rocky Mountain News.
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About Cole: Not since the days of Ace Ntsoelengoe, the Minnesota Kicks and the North American Soccer League has Cole McGinnis been so excited about soccer. Cole handles the business functions of ColoradoSoccerNow.com, and he's the man to speak with about front-office issues.
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About Jonathan: Jonathan Ingraham is a Colorado native, sports hound, outdoors enthusiast and Metropolitan State College student, working on a journalism degree. Outside of school, he works as a freelance photographer and is available for photographing places, people, events, games or artistic shoots for businesses or personal collections.
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About Tom: Tom Auclair remembers watching the New England Tea Men when he was younger and thinking what a terrible name that was for a sports team. He has worked for the Rocky Mountain News, Longmont Daily Times-Call and several newspapers in New Hampshire. He's currently working as an editor and photographer for a collection of Web sites. He can't believe how quick Omar Cummings is.
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