Gator Men’s Soccer Picked Third in NCAC

Aug 26, 2007

CLEVELAND – The Allegheny College Gators, the 2006 North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament Runner-Up, have been picked to finish third in the preseason ballot by the league’s coaches. The Gators return six starters and 18 letterwinners from a team that narrowly missed advancing to the NCAA Tournament, falling in the NCAC Championship game, ending the year with a 11-5-3 record.

Regular season champion and NCAA Division III tournament semifinalist Ohio Wesleyan was picked to finish atop the league, accumulating 98 ballot points and nine of the ten first-place votes. Denison – the NCAC tournament champion – was picked to follow, with the Big Red earning 86 points. Allegheny accumulated 73 points with Oberlin and Wittenberg tying for the fourth spot with 70, as Wittenberg picked up the last first place vote. Wooster (41 points) led off the bottom half of the league with Hiram (39), Kenyon (37), Wabash (21) and Earlham (15) rounding out the 10 league teams.

Allegheny will look to contend with the loss of three of their top four scorers, but have three players, Jim Beyer (Pittsford, N.Y./Pittsford Mendon) (5 goals), Nathaniel Yates (Cleveland Heights, Ohio/Cleveland Heights) (3 goals) and Eric Sloan (Pittsburgh, Pa./Mt. Lebanon) (3 goals) to add scoring depth for the squad. Defense was the key to the Gators’ success in 2006, and will be looked upon to help this years’ squad, as the team returns its goalkeeper in Ryan Larkin (Pittsburgh, Pa./Baldwin), who had a goals against average of 0.81 with eight shutouts and key defenders Jeremy Garbutt (St. Louis, Mo./John Burroughs School) and Pat Bowman (Pittsburgh, Pa./Mt. Lebanon) also return to help anchor the defense from the back.

The Gators open the 2007 season in Cleveland, Ohio, where they will face off against #13 ranked Case Western Reserve in the first game of the Case Western Reserve Classic starting at 4:00 p.m. before taking the pitch against Lawrence starting at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday.

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