The Oswego State men’s soccer team has seen improvement in the past few seasons thanks to many different players who have been able to come in and produce. One deciding factor has been the emergence of its head coach and what he has brought to the table.

This would have been head coach Dan Kane’s fourth season at the helm, and the Lakers were looking to make the jump above .500 in the SUNYAC for the first time since the 2008 season. Of his first three seasons at Oswego State, Kane felt that the team he assembled last season had the best chance to achieve that feat.

“The guys committed to each other and to having a winning season,” Kane said. “Not just the talk of the things that are required to having a winning season, but the real work that is required to make sure you are in a position to win some games.”

Kane also mentioned that the team played extremely well at home thanks to the fans, but the Laker faithful were not the only deciding factor in their success at home. 

Junior defender Caleb Munski played one of the biggest roles on the team last year. Munski anchored a defense that set the record for the best goals-against average (1.00) in the team’s history. The 18 goals allowed last season was sixth-best in program history. Munski has developed a leadership position on this team, and he holds himself and his team to a high standard of play.

“For the team as a whole, we kind of found our swagger,” Munski said. “As a team, you have to have that winning mentality, and I think a lot of us believed in our team. But once you start stringing a few wins together, a few good sequences together, the team kind of gets that winning mentality.” 

Kane has a lot of confidence in his Second-Team All-Conference centerback and has described him to be a “warrior” on the field, but he was not the only returning leader on this Laker team. Goalkeeper Brian Terra was another big reason for their historic defensive season in 2019, and he looked to make another statement in 2020.

Terra was named Third-Team All-Conference after a stellar season between the pipes. His goals-against average was 0.96, the best of his career at Oswego State and showed that Terra had blossomed into a leader on this team.

“Just seeing that progression and that growth not only [for] me but the whole team,” Terra said. “The defense has come a long way. We looked solid in the back this year, we would have had a great backline same as last year, and we know that we would have [gone] a long way this year. We are still focused and ready to do whatever is thrown at us from this point forward.”

Terra and Kane have been together since 2017, as Terra was part of Kane’s first recruiting class at Oswego State. In their first season, the Lakers were 6-9-1 overall and 1-8 in the conference, finishing 10th. In 2019, the Lakers finished 9-7-2 with a 4-4-1 conference record and ended their season as a SUNYAC quarterfinalist for the first time since 2014. 

While the defense shined last year, so did the offense which scored 28 goals, led by forward Caleb Asamoah. His eight goals helped power the offense in 2019, but his graduation might have been detrimental to the offense this upcoming season if it were not for the talented young core this team returned. Players like juniors Slater Bushen and Ryan Young, as well as sophomore Kieran Gilroy, have all shown their ability to score when the team needs it most and have helped build the culture that Kane and the Oswego State men’s soccer team hoped to have carried into this season. 

“The big thing [this year] is finding out our identity,” Kane said. “How do we put these pieces together to give opponents the most trouble possible and provide the most strength for us as possible? That’s the fun part of any season is to figure that out and put those pieces of the puzzle together.”

Photo by Tom Pemrick | The Oswegonian