Mutiny Keeping Hope Alive

New England Faces Prospect of Missing Playoffs

July 10, 2009

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Karen Gurnon knows what it's like when a team that pencils in a playoff trip every year finally has to kiss the postseason berth goodbye.

The University of Connecticut sophomore and second-year Mutiny player was on the 2009 Huskies team that was the first in program history to see its season end before the NCAA Tournament.

So if the New England Mutiny fail to make the playoffs for only the second time in the history of the Women's Premier Soccer League franchise -- and the Mutiny, who host the Philadelphia Liberty Saturday at 7 p.m. at Agawam High School, are still not mathematically eliminated -- Gurnon will not be in uncharted waters.

"Both of these teams, UConn and the Mutiny, worked really hard. Especially this Mutiny team," Gurnon said. "We only have five or six people back, and we've gone through a lot of adversity. But we've been doing our best. You just don't always get the kind of results you want."

That the embers of New England's playoff hopes are still glowing is as surprising as the team's task is difficult. Not only must the Mutiny (2-6) win Saturday night and then again on Tuesday on the road against the Baystate Select, they'd need a laundry list of events seemingly as complex as the invasion of Normandy to help them.

New England already missed a less complicated chance Tuesday when they lost a 3-1 road decision to the Boston Aztecs, a game in which a victory would have kept their fate entirely in their own hands.

The rub, according to New England, is that the Mutiny didn't really lose to a WPSL side; the Mutiny really lost to a team that was made up almost entirely of players from the Boston Breakers of the professional WPS. The Breakers, coached by former U.S. National Team coach Tony DiCicco, have a working relationship with the Aztecs, and DiCicco, who last year coached the SoccerPlus Connecticut team that was eliminated from the WPSL playoffs by the Mutiny, loaded the Aztecs for the game that meant so much to New England.

"The Aztecs usually get only three or four players from the Breakers. The other night we played against 10 of them," Mutiny owner Joe Ferrara said.

"Our coaches told us they'd brought down a lot of people. We recognized them and you have to work with it," said Gurnon, 19. "I guess you could say that it was kind of a compliment. It was just another challenge for us this year."

It would be fair to say that the young Mutiny haven't met enough of the challenges they've faced, or they wouldn't be in this predicament. But, playoffs or no playoffs, it is precisely that youth that bodes so well for the future.

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