WESTON, Mass. — Regis College men’s soccer head coach Renato Capobianco was impressed with his team’s resilience throughout the course of the season. Although the Pride (7-8-2, 5-5-2 GNAC) suffered an early exit from the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) to Johnson & Wales (15-4, 10-2 GNAC), it does not tell the whole story of their season. The team won four of their first six games before adversity struck.

“We were healthy,” Capobianco said when asked about the strong start. “We lost three players to very long injuries at the first Johnson & Wales game, one player for the season and two we lost for five games each.”

The team suffered their first loss of the season in their fourth contest, falling to Johnson & Wales 5-2 on Sept. 17.

“Ultimately, injuries kind of put us into a hole,” Capobianco said about the remainder of the season.

In his 11th season at the helm of the men’s soccer program, Capobianco had to learn to navigate around roadblocks and obstacles unlike any other caused by the pandemic. The team did not play in 2020 due to COVID-19. Players were required to fill out daily surveys in apps on their smartphones to confirm that they were not experiencing symptoms and that they were following testing schedules and protocols.

“One place we had to come home three hours on the bus without being able to shower,” Capobianco said. “What made it stressful was that there wasn’t uniformity between schools because we played in three different states.”

Capobianco attributes his team’s perseverance to the strong goalkeeping of seniors Freddie Beckmann (Franklin, Massachusetts) and Ivan Ramirez (San Juan, Puerto Rico), as well as a solid season by senior center back and team captain Diego Roman (Guaynabo, Puerto Rico). Roman earned second team All-GNAC and was tied for second most goals on the team (3), while strongly securing the last line of defense in front of his goaltenders.

The former Weston High School men’s soccer coach of 10 years recalls the high point of the season for the Pride, a 1-0 victory over Emmanuel in their final game of the regular season on the road on Oct. 27. Regis was ranked 8th at the time and Emmanuel was 6th. The winner earned a spot in the GNAC playoff tournament.

“We had lost Roman to injury. I only had three subs for the entire game, which is unheard of at the collegiate level,” Capobianco remembered. Freshman Frederico Lavini-Ayalla (Weston, Florida) headed a corner kick into the back of the net in the ninth minute of action to give the Pride an early 1-0 lead.

Emmanuel’s best chance was on a penalty kick with 10 minutes left in regulation. Freddie Beckmann was able to make a miraculous save to deny Emmanuel an equalizer and the game would end 1-0 in favor of the Pride. Beckmann recorded 14 saves throughout his impressive showing in the final game of the year.

“Taking that must-win game with a depleted squad, where your goalkeeper makes a save on a penalty kick with 10 minutes to go, that was huge, it was just fantastic,” Capobianco said.

The team will be losing some key players going into next season, including senior captain Roman and both senior keepers Beckmann and Ramirez. Capobianco said the team had a third goalie, Kyle Weidemann (Piscataway, New Jersey), a freshman who was learning from the two seniors for next season. He also said that two more goalkeepers will be part of the incoming recruiting class next year and the job is wide open. They will have sophomore Jacob Freitas (Dracut, Massachusetts) returning next year, who led the team with five goals scored, along with Santiago Pedraza Novak (Bogota, Columbia) who led the team with five assists.

The 2021 campaign was a step in the right direction for the program following their 2019 season in which they finished 4-13 (2-9 GNAC) and missed the GNAC postseason. Capobianco thinks their strong core of returning players and their incoming recruiting class will help the program get closer to the top of the league next year.

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