September 27, 2000
by Teddy Kider

Sophomore Jesse Dymond charges upfield with two defenders from the Field School trailing. However, the Lions’ offense was overmatched by Field’s, and they lost 2-1 in the season opener at home on Sept. 14.

Looking forward to better times, both the boys and girls varsity soccer teams got off to a rough start in preseason play.

Despite the boys placing third out of four teams in their tournament and the girls losing all four of their games, each team thinks that its preseason performance is not indicative of how it will perform this year.

Spirits appear to be high for the girls and in spite of losses in these early games, the team can still put together a good season, according to sophomore Shelby Zitelman.

“I think that we will do really well, considering that we don’t have a lot of natural talent. We work well together, we’re very aggressive and we show a lot of effort,” she said.

The girls soccer team, led by Head Coach Arnold Tarzy and Captains Emily Kavalier and Ilana Jacobs, lost in the pre-season to St. John’s, Stoneridge, Richard Montgomery and Blair.

Even with the team’s loss of four seniors this season and its disappointing performance in the Maryland Soccer Plex Tournament that took place on Aug. 30 and 31, Jacobs thinks that the team is coming together nicely.

“I think that the pre-season has really helped us, and I think that we are now working together as a team,” said Jacobs. “We had a lot of intensity.”

“ There has been a definite improvement in our fitness since practicebegan,” Zitelman added. “There’s also been an improvement in our tactics and the fundamentals of the game.”

In the Beth T’filoh tournament, held on Sept. 3 and 4, the boys varsity team came in third place out of the four participating teams, winning the consolation game in an overtime shoot-out.

Though the team hopes for wins this season, they are focused on the future.

“This is a season of rebuilding,” said senior Eric Nussenblatt. “Losing our seniors, we lost a lot of the backbone of our team.

“This year we have a very young team, and we’re going to rebuild that backbone for the future,” he said.

The boys’ head coach, Barry Gudelsky, is expecting more from the team during the season.

“We should be better. We didn’t have Zach Ende, Jonathan Schilit and Lior Prosor in that last [tournament] game,” Gudelsky said.

Like Nussenblatt, freshman Josh Goldstone said that this season has the potential to be the start of a promising future for their team.

“We have a lot of young players, mostly freshmen. I think they’ll all develop into good players, and later on, the team will be back to where it used to be,” said Goldstone.