JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For the second straight season, Jacksonville University’s men’s soccer team is a step away from the NCAA tournament. This time, the Dolphins hope to take that next step.
JU hosts Lipscomb at 7 p.m. on Saturday in the ASUN Conference championship game, which is an unlikely story considering how the season began. In the Dolphins first seven matches this season, they scored two goals and lost all seven.
“Doubt creeps in, relationships go sour and most of it, good behavior is compromised because of those things,” said head coach Mauricio Ruiz. “No team is without its problems and adversities, and like most, we like to handle them in-house.”
Somehow, in the midst of the slow start, the Dolphins kept it together long enough to start to turn things around. It wasn’t an easy road. On the field, Ruiz had to manage down a man in each of the last two games for nearly 60 minutes each game.
By the time the conference tournament arrived, JU was the fifth seed, had two key players suspended for red cards and a starting goalkeeper injured. Jacksonville wasn’t projected to make it past the first round.
“We started a redshirt freshman in goal, Eli Lasley, who was making his college debut,” Ruiz said. “One of the two suspended players was our starting left back senior captain, who has not missed a single game in his Four-year career at JU. I don’t know if it gets much more adverse than that.”
But the Dolphins overcame the adversity with a 2-1 victory over No. 4 North Florida setting up a matchup with Stetson, the regular season champions.
This time, the Dolphins found themselves at a advantage when Stetson drew a red card in the second minute of the match. JU took a lead on the resulting penalty kick and held the advantage until the 87th minute when Stetson tied it up. In a second overtime, JU’s Alberto Escobedo scored to give the Dolphins the win and clinch a spot in the championship. Like the entire JU team, Escobedo had traveled a long road to glory after tearing his ACL late last season.
“As many athletes, the year after is never the same and there is still some adjustments a player has to make,” Ruiz said. “He has really struggled with that during the season, because he has worked so hard to put himself back on the field. It hasn’t been easy. His minutes have been minimized and his role on the field has changed. With that being said, in the latter part of the season he started to embrace his new role, as a substitute player that will play limited minutes in a more advanced role and mainly as a leader on the team. He’s accepted that his situation doesn’t define him and that he will make the most out of his role.”
The game ended in a haze of euphoria and relief, according to Ruiz, who became the first coach in ASUN Conference history to guide a team to back-to-back championship game appearances. Last year, they lost to Florida Gulf Coast. This year, Ruiz hopes that experience will help the Dolphins to take the next step.
“It would be validation of our players’ and staff’s hard work,” Ruiz said. “We preach to our guys to control their attitude and effort, and even during our toughest of times, that was always our main focus. So it will be great to show our players and our society that attitude and effort still has its’ place in athletics; that team still matters more than the one individual player.”