Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Minutemen head into 2013 retooled and refocused

Massachusetts men’s soccer coach Sam Koch’s tone changes considerably when asked about the 2013 season.

Koch’s excited to turn over a new leaf this year, hoping to put a difficult 2012 behind a UMass squad which finished at 5-11-2. He was very candid in evaluating the direction of the team, acknowledging recent performance simply wasn’t good enough.

Taylor C. Snow/Daily Collegian

“We felt we had to make a change in the program,” Koch said. “There were three years where we had players who weren’t invested in trying to make us a better team. In all honesty, their passion wasn’t there and they really didn’t want to play all that much.”

The changes made were as swift as they were aggressive.

The Minutemen return just five upperclassmen this season and will be without their captain Brett Canepa until the second half of the season due to a torn ACL.

There will be an added pressure on young players to step up, something Koch both understands and embraces.

“We’re a young, energetic, hard-working group and they have a lot of pride and a lot of passion. As we go, we’re gonna get better,” Koch said.

A wait-and-see approach will be imperative for UMass, as almost half the team is comprised of freshmen. And while it’s still too early to single out specific freshmen, Koch is cautiously pleased with the growth of the first-year players.

“I think we’re gonna be good,” Koch said, “but how quickly we can get there, that I don’t know.”

He also understands consistency will be difficult to achieve in 2013.

“The toughest thing about freshmen is they might play this week extremely well and next week they might have a blinder going into the darkest, deepest shadows of their mind,” Koch said. “You just never know what they’re gonna do day in and day out because they’re brand new.”

A season ago, the Minutemen struggled to maintain a competitive goals scored-to-goals allowed ratio, letting in 32 goals while scoring only 16.

But with some productive preparation this spring, UMass appears primed to turn that trend around.

“We cleaned up a lot of things,” Koch said. “We weren’t very good defensively in our midfield to which we were able to sort that out and change our system to make it easier to close down the opposing team. We’re going to defend a lot better than we did in the past which will help our offense because we’ll be winning balls a lot earlier and a lot deeper.”

The goal is to generate more chances offensively, something that should benefit experienced forwards such as Josh Schwarz and Connor DeVivo, who will be relied upon heavily to provide veteran support.

Last season also proved to be difficult for Koch on a personal level. Koch was diagnosed with sinus cancer 13 months ago and went through various stages of chemotherapy throughout the season.

This year hopes to be a different story for Koch, who will go through treatment three days at a time and then take three weeks off. He’ll be able to be around the team and ultimately says he feels better.

“I’m healthy and I feel good and the doctors are happy. It’s not an issue and we don’t want to make it an issue,” he said.

Mark Chiarelli can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @Mark_Chiarelli.

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