For men's soccer, layoff offers a chance to relax, regroup

Will Swaim's roommates have been pounding the walls of their apartment this week.

Not because the Terrapins men's soccer team lost in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals last Tuesday. Not because the Terps missed out on a top-four seed and the home-field advantage it guarantees through the quarterfinals of the 48-team NCAA tournament.

No, forward Casey Townsend and former Terps midfielder Billy Cortes are frustrated for a far more trivial reason: missed chords. Swaim, the Terps' redshirt senior goalkeeper, is using his 12-day furlough between games to hone his guitar skills, a hobby he admits is far from perfected.

"Oh, I know they're so sick of it by now," Swaim said yesterday, chuckling. "That's part of why I do it. I like annoying them."

For Townsend and the rest of the No. 6 Terps, listening to Swaim's racket is a minor price to pay for a much-needed break from the grind of elite college soccer.

As of mid-October, the Terps had played more games than any other Division I soccer team. Their schedule had at least two games a week for more than a month and a half.

And even when their load started to lighten up, the matches didn't get any easier.

The Terps will enter the NCAA tournament this Sunday on a four-game winless streak, their longest such stretch in seven years. Despite recording 75 shots and 37 corner kicks, they've scored just one goal in each of those past four matches. That's a major drop-off from the 38 goals they tallied in their first 15 outings.

According to coach Sasho Cirovski, much of the Terps' late-season struggles can be attributed to a barrage of injuries and suspensions. They've been without at least one — and at times, as many as three — of their starters since Oct. 14.

"Having the extra time now is very helpful for us," Cirovski said after the Terps' 2-1 loss to Boston College in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals last week. "Hopefully by the first game of the NCAA Tournament, we'll have several good days of training and our starters will be back in sync."

Now that he has all of his players healthy and available, Cirovski has started tinkering with the structure of his practices. Rather than running through a laundry list of drills each day, he's begun introducing more games, a rarity at this stage of the year.

"He realizes we need to put the fun back into it," Swaim said. "We're doing some things that you normally only see during the offseason, but I think it just reminds us why we all do this in the first place: because it's fun."

The Terps plan to take that new approach into Sunday's second-round matchup against the winner of tonight's Xavier-West Virginia game. Their weary muscles are rested, and their piles of homework are nearly completed. Now they're ready to compete … finally.

"This break has made a huge difference," defender Taylor Kemp said. "We got used to taking abuse, and now we're getting back in the swing of things. Right now, we're feeling as good as ever."

That is, other than the unfortunate souls subjected to Swaim's attempts at rock stardom.

"Don't worry," Swaim said, "I probably won't be putting out a record any time soon."

letourneau@umdbk.com