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BY ALEX RYAN-BOND

In print | Published October 28, 2004

Since the start of the school year there have been some troubling developments in the world of Swarthmore sports.

While most of our sports have been keeping to their usual track of getting annihilated in game after game by much better prepared and athletically talented teams, one has seemed to buck the trends and defy the odds.

That sport has been men’s soccer. Out of all the possible and plausible outcomes, men’s soccer has emerged as the shining star of the Swat sports world this Fall, compiling an 8-5-2 record overall and a 4-2-1 mark in conference play this year (good enough for 3rd place). They are also good bet to make the Centennial Conference playoffs this year, and have yet to be counted out of any game they’ve played all year.

Furthermore, the team is spearheaded by a group of talented underclassmen and are bolstered by a large freshman class who are not only dedicated to their sport and playing hard but also to partying hard on the weekends. Throw in some key senior leadership in the form of a moon-walking goalie and a coach who is driven to win and you have a successful team.

This is obviously some kind of mistake.

Swarthmore teams aren’t supposed to win, right? Usually we’re the game that gets overlooked in the schedule and then maybe we pull of an upset, right? We certainly don’t compete for playoff spots and we definitely aren’t the team to beat in the conference. Ever.

Something needs to be done about this issue, since it is simply ruining our reputation as a fine academic institution. If the men’s soccer team keeps on winning and (gasp of horror) builds a reputation as a good team in the conference it could have lasting repercussions on Swarthmore’s preciously guarded academic integrity.

Think about it, folks. The effect this could have on Swarthmore would be enormous, and that fun piece of paper you get after four years of hard work with no cable or air conditioning and crappy food and the occasional bout of work induced insanity could be totally devalued. If soccer gets really good there could be a disastrous domino effect on all our other sports, because everyone knows how that theory was effectively proven by the spread of communism in the last century. We need to be like Ike and act now.

Soccer has got to go. That’s right, just cut the entire damn sport, including the women’s team, since they are the most likely team to come down with a sudden infection of good play, seeing as it is the same sport and all. If we allow this thing to creep slowly through our sports department we might look down the road five, 10 or even 20 years from now and we might end up with a good athletics program, and then our whole academic reputation would be shot to hell because everyone knows jocks can’t think and don’t contribute a damn thing to this fine institution (like Nobel prizes).

To those of you who think this solution is somewhat extreme, I say that you are simply unversed in the history of Swarthmore’s Athletics program. In the past we have not hesitated to jettison up and coming teams in order to protect our academic integrity, cough, football, cough cough (sorry I must have a cold). And since that worked out so well, I don’t see cutting soccer as being a problem for us at all.

And on a pragmatic note, by cutting soccer we’d just be righting some of the unintended consequences of the football cut, since in a horribly unwise move the college decided to allot footballs recruits to other teams (like soccer), which has only beefed up some of our other sports teams. Thus we must cut soccer now and take a serious look at scaling back our facilities and funds for our other programs in the near future…no price is too high for the sake of maintaining an academic reputation earned through 140 years of hard work.

Because everybody knows that people who suck at sports succeed in life.

Alex Ryan-Bond is a sophomore. You can reach him at aryanbo1@swarthmore.edu

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