Mid-Atlantic Region

[Kuiper]

Messiah has posted its 2024 Roster

Here are a few observations:

- 26 on the roster, compared with 28 on last season's roster

- Some strong players return for a 5th Covid year: 2nd team All-American and first team All-Region D Ben Vollmer, first team All-Region M Jeric Morlote, and regular starting D Caleb Aldridge, and regular contributing M Josh Bratager

- Lots of goal scorers and playmakers have graduated, including Matt McDonald's 13 goals and Ben Lefever and his 6 assists, who also led the team in shots by a considerable margin with McDonald's 79 shots and Lefever's 46 shots. On the other hand, Sam Phillips and his 12 goals (on 40 shots), and Patrick Lee and his 6 assists (and 42 shots), return.

- 8 freshman join the team

[Ejay]

Messiah has posted its 2024 Roster

Here are a few observations:

- 26 on the roster, compared with 28 on last season's roster

- Some strong players return for a 5th Covid year: 2nd team All-American and first team All-Region D Ben Vollmer, first team All-Region M Jeric Morlote, and regular starting D Caleb Aldridge, and regular contributing M Josh Bratager

- Lots of goal scorers and playmakers have graduated, including Matt McDonald's 13 goals and Ben Lefever and his 6 assists, who also led the team in shots by a considerable margin with McDonald's 79 shots and Lefever's 46 shots. On the other hand, Sam Phillips and his 12 goals (on 40 shots), and Patrick Lee and his 6 assists (and 42 shots), return.

- 8 freshman join the team

Fun Fact. Ben Lefever has joined the coaching staff of neighboring Elizabethtown College.
https://etownbluejays.com/staff-directory/ben-lefever/395

[Kuiper]

Mary Washington has posted its 2024 Roster

Here are a few observations:

- 41 on the roster, compared with 33 last year.  That's a pretty meaningful increase in roster size

- Although UMW loses Josh Kirkland, who scored 15 goals and dished out 8 assists last season, they get a ton of experienced talent back as graduate students playing their covid year (which is part of the reason for the increased roster size), including 3rd team All-American Gabe Francesconi and regular starters Aidan Shell, Diego Guzman, Nelsar Castillo, Julian Schmugge, Nathan Terrell, and contributors Juan Vargas and Will Rissing. Plus, 2nd team All-American Carter Berg, who scored 13 goals and had 10 assists last season, returns for his senior season.

- They may have found help replacing Kirkland in grad transfer forward Jared Dubose from DI Radford, who scored 8 goals in two seasons after transferring from Temple.

- They brought in 9 freshman

[Kuiper]

Stevens has posted its 2024 Roster

Here are a few observations:

- 35 players on the roster, compared with 28 last season

- They picked up two grad transfers: GK Guillermo Castaneda-Chang, who was second team All-Liberty League last year at Hobart and D Tyler Warren, who appeared in 6 games last season for DI Northwestern

- Although Bruno Adino is gone, All-MAC Freedom second team defender Dylan Maund returns for a Grad Student year

- They have 10 freshman, including F Matthew Murillo, a United Soccer Coaches All-State player in California from Cathedral High School in Los Angeles.  If Stevens hadn't ended its football program in the 1920s, the football coach would take one look at this guy and try to get him to quit soccer and play linebacker instead (he's listed at 6'4" and 196 lbs)

[Kuiper]

Muhlenberg has posted its 2024 Roster

A few observations:

- 33 on the roster, compared with 35 last season

- 9 freshman

- They lose most of their top scorers and offensive players to graduation (Taylan Akdag, Chris Richards, Luke Feeney, Zack Mikuta, Brandin Osborne).  Akdag, who was 2nd team all Region V, and Richards, who was 1st team all Region V, alone accounted for the vast majority of their shots too (55 and 53 respectively). 

- They return their All Region V 3rd Team GK Ben Mulford back and a couple of their starting defenders, including All Region V 3rd team freshman Sam Roberts, but they lose a few important contributors from a team defense that was first in the Centennial and 26th in the country in GAA, including Zack Mikuta and All-Centennial Conference honorable mention defender Caleb Herring

[4231CenterBack]

Messiah scrimmaged Goucher yesterday in Towson.  Messiah scores 3 in the first 20ish minutes.  Bratager (2) and Morlotte (1).  After that they subbed the entire team to get the young kids some time. Final score 3-0.

[Kuiper]

MAC Freedom has come out with its preseason coaches poll

Rank  Team     Points

1st Place Votes

1.  Stevens  48 (6)

2.  Lebanon Valley  44 (2)

3.  Misericordia  36

4.  DeSales  31

5.  FDU-Florham  22

6.  Arcadia  19

7.  King's  16

8.  Delaware Valley  8

[4231CenterBack]

Messiah bested Gettysburg 3-1 at home yesterday afternoon.  Goals from Phillips, Pezzino, and Lee. Lee has slotted in at target replacing McDonald. Gettysburg scored first on a set piece and by all accounts made Messiah work for it.

[Kuiper]

Washington College has posted its 2024 Roster

A few observations:

- 35 on the roster, compared with 33 last season

- 11 freshman

- Six players return for a Covid season, including, most notably, Team MVP and All Region V GK Anthony Pinto.

- Several notable departures, including first team All-American defender Chris Comber, who has transferred to D1 Binghamton for his Covid year (and started and played the full 90 in the team's opening shutout win), co-MVP leading scorer and 2nd team all Centennial midfielder Ben Strine, leading assist man and 2nd team all Centennial Conference midfielder/defender Harrison Malone, and regular starting midfielder Ben Horgan

[eaglesoccerdad]

Mary Washington beat Randolph Macon 4-2. UMW goals Amarose 2x, Castillo, Francesoni. RMC scored on a PK and scramble off a corner. UMW looked really strong the 1st 10 minutes but seemed to back after going up 2-0

[Kuiper]

Tight race predicted in the Centennial Conference

https://centennial.org/news/2024/8/17/hopkins-named-mens-soccer-preseason-favorite.aspx

2024 Centennial Conference Men's Soccer Preseason Poll

Rank | Institution (First-Place Votes)   Points
1. Johns Hopkins (4)       76
2. Franklin & Marshall (3)   72
3. Washington College (3)    69
4. Muhlenberg   55
5. Dickinson   44
6. Swarthmore   43
7. Haverford   35
8. Gettysburg   30
9T. McDaniel   13
9T. Ursinus   13

[SierraFD3soccer]

Tight race predicted in the Centennial Conference

https://centennial.org/news/2024/8/17/hopkins-named-mens-soccer-preseason-favorite.aspx

2024 Centennial Conference Men's Soccer Preseason Poll

Rank | Institution (First-Place Votes)   Points
1. Johns Hopkins (4)       76
2. Franklin & Marshall (3)   72
3. Washington College (3)    69
4. Muhlenberg   55
5. Dickinson   44
6. Swarthmore   43
7. Haverford   35
8. Gettysburg   30
9T. McDaniel   13
9T. Ursinus   13

Definitely going to be tight. Also with 6 teams making the playoffs, its anyone's conf. to win. Last year, JHU finished 4th in the conf. 4-3-2 and I think the Muhls were in a similar situation the year before - 3-1-5. 

[Kuiper]

Swarthmore posted its 2024 Roster

A few observations:

- 26 on the roster, compared with 33 last season

- 6 Freshman

- Notable departures include 3rd team All Region midfielder Stathis Kalathias, honorable mention All-Centennial defender Matthew Loreg, and regular contributors midfielders Antonio Callegari and Leo Hecht and forward Brandon Cramblit, who was tied for second in the team in goals scored

- They had 9 seniors on the roster last season, so the smaller freshman class accounts for part of the drop in roster size.  There are also a few 2023 non-seniors missing from the roster in 2024:  Defenders Noah Pearlman and Grant Nguyen and forwards Thaniel Illuzzi and Art Keys.  None of them played more than a few games last season.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Franklin & Marshall has posted its 2024 roster, including freshman additions.

https://godiplomats.com/sports/mens-soccer/roster

A couple of observations (just because this is an early roster drop and not because I would do this for every school!)

- This is probably news to no one other than me, but I was interested to see that Oscar Horwitz is back.  He was listed as a senior last year, but he has only played 3 years of college soccer.  Presumably, he is a super senior using his Covid year in the last year that is possible.  There were other players listed as seniors in the 2023 roster who only played 3 years and aren't back (Kagan, Senatore, Sobel, Pine)

- Does F&M always staff its roster very thinly at the GK position?  I saw that last year they had only 1 GK on the roster and this year they added a freshman so they at least have a backup.

- On the other hand, what they lack in depth they make up in height at the GK position.  Their 6'6" junior is now joined by a 6'5" freshman.  I guess the old "shoot low and score high" adage applies against F&M

- Roughly the same roster size as last year (33 v. 32), with 10 incoming freshman

One last update. Just posted on instagram, Jack Borden, junior transfer (Lafayette and Utah Valley).  Check out his free kick videos. Pretty nice. Could be a successor to All-American Shay Adamson.  https://www.instagram.com/p/C_OmmBRvLxR/?hl=en

I don't think he was listed on the roster before. He's a big guy and should be a great addition to the midfield.

[SierraFD3soccer]

JHU v. W&L 1-0 JHU. Tough goal and you could say that W&L was playing much better then the second min. of the 2nd half happened. Still a lot of soccer to play.