During the first three road matches of the 2024 Marist men’s soccer season, a team trying to establish their identity did not seem close to doing so.
In their 4-0 loss to Wisconsin, an early red card put Marist at a disadvantage, leading to a dominant performance from Wisconsin’s Dean Boltz. In a 6-1 loss to Marquette, graduate student goalkeeper Jamie Lowell was battered by a Marquette side that buried six of their nine shots on goal. In the latest 3-0 loss to Cornell, Marist trailed for practically the entire match after allowing a goal in just the third minute.
“I still think we’re trying to find our identity. I don’t think we found it yet… we don’t know exactly who we are yet,” said head coach Matt Viggiano after the loss to Marquette.
Then, things flipped on Thursday night, when the Red Foxes put together their best 90 minutes of the season in a 1-0 road win over Army. Forward Chris Verheul, a 22-year-old freshman who hails from the Netherlands, shined by scoring a goal and almost burying another later on potentially a more impressive shot.
“I know I’m a little bit older, so I try to help the team,” said Chris Verheul before the match. “It’s a little bit different because I try to adapt my English, but I try to help the team and lead the team to do well on the pitch.”
Chris Verheul enters Marist having already played 30 matches in the Dutch fourth division of soccer, and has since moved up the ranks. He joins the program alongside his brother, Gjis Verheul, a freshman center-back who drew the red card in the opener but rebounded to play all 90 minutes in the win over the Army Black Knights.
The family connections do not stop there–both brothers are cousins of former Marist defender Hermanus Achterkamp, who was the MAAC Defensive Player of the Year in 2021.
“It’s a difference between playing in the Netherlands and here, it’s a lot of hard work, but I like the hard work,” said Gjis Verheul.
Alongside Gjis Verheul, sophomore defender Nicholas Sanchez plays a pivotal role on the Marist backline. Finishing second on the team in minutes played as a freshman, Sanchez currently leads the team by averaging 85 minutes per match. In the Army win, Sanchez made a crucial block on an open shot attempt to prevent the Black Knights from scoring.
“I’d say my role leading the defense is just getting everybody organized when we’re going in the attack and when we’re coming back defensively,” said Sanchez. “I think now as a defensive team, we just want to create an identity of what we’re going to do in the rest of the season.”
Playing back in the net is Lowell, Marist’s third goalkeeper in three years. Lowell brings with him both experience and leadership; before transferring, he started 25 matches at the University of Maryland and posted a 1.16 goals-against average.
More recently, his teammates voted him one of their three team captains. Former Maryland and Marist forward Stefan Copetti helped put the program on Lowell’s radar while on the search for his new home.
“When talking with [Viggiano], the vision they had for the program this year, it was something I just wanted to be bought into right away,” said Lowell. “This is a school that obviously has the talent within the team and within all the staff to go really far, and it’s something I wanted to be a part of right from the beginning.”
Despite some early-season struggles, Lowell has garnered high praise from Viggiano, who described him as “definitely the most vocal [goalkeeper] we’ve had” in his 18 years coaching Marist. Lowell prides himself on helping his teammates organize defensive presses, defensive corners, defensive set pieces and even attacking corner kicks.
“As a goalkeeper, you always have to be communicating. We’re the eyes in the back. We can see the whole field, we can see if positionally we’re good or if we have to change things depending on the game or on the opponent,” said Lowell.
While the offense has been quiet aside from the emerging Chris Verheul, Marist does feature some quality players who have the potential to contribute to their attack. Junior midfielder Skyler Cunha, a team captain last season, returns after scoring two goals and notching three assists in 2023. He also notched Marist’s first goal of the season, a penalty kick in the Marquette match that he buried to the left side.
“[I’m] trying to just help the team in any way I can and put the ball to dangerous areas, and try to provide the best chance for my teammates to score,” said Cunha.
Senior forward Richard Morel returns to the squad after scoring nine goals over the past two seasons, but his role has been somewhat reduced thus far. Sophomore midfielder Kyle Evans also returns with the Red Foxes after playing over 1,000 minutes as one of the youngest players in the MAAC conference a season ago. The former NY Red Bulls academy player is still trying to emerge as a force, and another year of maturation ought to help his case.
Other intriguing additions include two transfers from Syracuse’s 2022 national championship team: junior midfielder/defender Aidan Arber and graduate student defender/midfielder Stephen Betz. Arber has started all four matches thus far, and Betz was immediately voted as a team captain along with Lowell and senior midfielder Andrea Nguionza.
“It was a great experience I had [at Syracuse]. I wanted something different and I thought I could have a bigger impact here as well,” said Arber. “[Viggiano] has been playing me higher and I’ve been able to figure out new positions for myself and learn from him and his style of play.”
Marist received votes for fifth in the MAAC coaches’ preseason poll, one spot ahead of their sixth-place finish in 2023 standings. With all of these returning and incoming pieces–attempting to coalesce before MAAC play commences at the end of the month–Viggiano expressed a cautiously optimistic outlook for his team.
“It’s interesting–I don’t even know how to straight answer that,” said Viggiano when asked about this season’s expectations. “The expectation is to be competitive; the minimum expectation is always to be in the [MAAC] playoffs, to give ourselves a chance to get into the NCAA tournament. I don’t see why we shouldn’t, at a minimum, finish in the top half of the MAAC.”
The Red Foxes will have their first chance to show their home fans what they are capable of tonight when they take to the Tenney Stadium pitch for their home opener. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. against UAlbany.
Edited by Marley Pope and Dan Aulbach
Graphic by Raegan Van Zandt; Photos from Marist Athletics
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