Boston College Athletics
BC Weekly Diary With Bobby Thompson
October 09, 2001 | Men's Soccer
October 2, 2001
The last week of soccer was the most important week of the season so far. For the last two years, our team has relied heavily on the scoring prowess of Casey Schmidt. It seemed as though whenever we needed a big goal, he provided it. Well, during the first half of play against local rival Harvard, Casey's season ended with a collision with the Harvard keeper. How we would respond in the second half and in the following games would be vital to whether we could still produce as a team and win games.
The answer was exactly what we needed.
In the second half of the Harvard game, Neil Krause stepped up and scored his second goal of the season and game to beat Harvard, 3-2.
On Saturday, the depth of our team was shown once more against our other local rival, Boston University. In this game, we showed that we could play the short passing game. We were forced to do without the speed of Casey up top. We adapted very well as two more players stepped up. Ramon Smith and our captain Chris Cleary produced a beautiful goal in the 85th minute to win, 1-0.
Ramon's hard work and skill set up a shot for Chris at the top of the box and he finished it brilliantly. Casey's absence has left our team with a huge void in the scoring column, but we seem to have the players who can make up for it and it was proven this week.
Off the field, our team has been very concerned for the health of our friend Casey. In the collision against Harvard, he suffered multiple fractures to his face around his eye. So far, he has been in inspiringly high spirits and has been very fortunate with the severity of his injury. There is some hope that he can be back on the field in the postseason. I hope we can make it that far for him so he can play again this year if everything works out.
Finally, I am very excited about the success our team had this week. A lot of guys got a chance to play much bigger roles on the team. However, I am much more excited about the fact that Casey is going to be okay, and I believe the rest of the team would say the same. Only a few days after the incident, Casey was on the bench against Boston University, cheering on the team. With leadership like that, it was no surprise we beat BU. That win was for Casey.
