It takes 11 men to field a regulation soccer team, but at Hood College, all it took was six exceptional individuals and the vision of an altruistic, humble coach who wanted to make something out of nothing.

Those young men were six of Wall’s recruits four years ago when he started the Hood College men’s soccer program from scratch. Jason Donnelly, Shane McCarrick, Tom Noonan, Samson Olorunfemi, Marcelino Rabara and Craig Wachter and laid the foundation for Hood men’s soccer and developed the program into a legitimate Division III contender in one of the toughest conferences in the country.

Those six student-athletes came from different backgrounds but all demonstrated and unrelenting worth ethic, a willingness to sacrifice personal gain for the good of the team and an unfailing dedication to the program. When asked to describe Hood men’s soccer in one word, they used words like “fun”, “journey”, “adversity”, “experience” and “memorable”.

Wall was faced with the daunting task of initiating a men’s soccer program when Hood College went fully coeducational in 2003. Men’s soccer was one of eight sports added to the Hood athletics slate that year and at the time Wall was serving as the boys soccer coach at Damascus High School.

Seeking a new challenge, Wall accepted the offer to start a men’s soccer program at a former women’s college with less than a full calendar year to recruit a squad. When he gathered his recruits for a preseason meeting in August, he remembers a group of only 10 players congregated in the room.

“It was a very humbling time for everybody including the guys in the room,” said Wall. “I always bring it up because I’ll never forget the faces of those guys that are still with us, looking to their left and their right, they know it takes 11 {to field a regulation squad}.”

So Wall marched through the dorms on campus and try to solicit male students who may, or may not, have played soccer before to come out for the team. McCarrick, a team co-captain all four years in the blue and gray and a presidential scholar at Hood, recalls that first preseason meeting and how he and the other players experienced quite a bit of trepidation.

“Our team was optimistic but we knew we were going to struggle with numbers,” McCarrick said. “Coach Wall assured us that things were going to be OK. We ended up getting a few other players in and we ended up with 14 or 15. That was our most diverse group that year, we had an array of all different sorts of players from all different kinds of backgrounds and skill levels.”

Wall entrusted McCarrick with the role of spearheading his young program strictly based on his impeccable family values.

“I remember meeting with Shane and his parents,” said Wall. “It was an easy situation from a recruiting standpoint because we had a lot in common. My family is very similar to his in terms of our upbringing--my mom is from Ireland, his father is from Ireland, so I knew from the value standpoint that we were going to get somebody quality. Talent-wise, I wasn’t even worried about that. I knew we were going to get somebody with work-ethic, and that’s truly what Shane has done. His work ethic is excellent and it’s because of his values from his family.”

Another key cog in Wall’s conglomerate, who would go on to establish numerous scoring records, was not even in that original group of 10; but his cousin was. Tom Noonan and Rob White are cousins who grew up in Wall’s hometown of Long Island, N.Y. White was one of Wall’s first recruits but Noonan, who was a product of the same high school as Wall (St. Anthony’s) originally chose to attend SUNY-New Paltz.

“It was my first time away from home and my friends and I was kind of homesick,” Noonan said. “It was such a big change of pace for me. I had never heard of Hood until Rob came down here to check it out and was getting recruited by Coach Wall. We’ve lived next door to each other our whole lives. It was a smooth transition for me because I was more comfortable with him.”

Wall immediately contacted Noonan and worked with the admissions office at Hood and in a span of 72 hours, Noonan stepped onto the practice field in Frederick. “I spent quite a number of hours with admissions over a very short time to make something available for him.”

One player who Wall made it a priority to target was Rabara, despite the fact that he never saw him play before he came to Hood. Rabara, who his teammates affectionately call “Mars”, hails from Rockville, Md. and played soccer at Wheaton High School.

“I never saw Mars play, but I did speak to two coaches about him and there was no doubt that we needed to have someone like Mars,” said Wall. “I didn’t need to see him play. He was much better than anyone ever told me about. His demeanor as a soccer player and his creativity is a model for some of our guys to look at. He has done very well for us ever since the beginning.”

Donnelly, who attended Parkville High School in Baltimore, was a recruit of Wall’s who sought out Hood both for athletic and academic incentives. Like Wall, Donnelly hopes to pursue a career in education and was excited to be part of a new program.

“Once {Coach Wall} found out I was interested in soccer he really made an effort to make sure I came,” said Donnelly. “He called me a couple times throughout the summer to make sure I was still interested. I could tell right away he was a real good guy and he could really relate to his players, not just as a player but as a person. One of his best qualities I would say is that he’s always there for his players.”

Wall’s intrinsically compassionate nature drew him to Olorunfemi, who originally hails from Nigeria but grew up in Cooksville, Md. Throughout his four years at Hood, Wall has witnessed a complete transformation in Olorunfemi as both a player and a student.

“I always thought Samson had good values,” said Wall. “You kind of know his roots with some basic conversations, and he was excited about this opportunity. Samson is a great story for Hood because he really was given an opportunity here he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else and he cashed in on it. Every year, Samson has gotten to be a better player whether it be technically, or physically, or mentally. I really have a lot of respect for what he has done as a person.”

Wachter, although recruited by Wall, originally came to Hood to be part of another grass-roots athletic program at Hood--basketball. He played both sports his freshman year but then opted to study abroad his sophomore year and did not play either soccer or basketball. But before his junior year, he rejoined the soccer squad with an invigorated sense of purpose.

“I think a newer Craig came back to us from a commitment level to saying this is what I want to do,” said Wall. “The one thing about Craig is you could always count him to give him everything he had from when he started as a freshman to when he started a junior. He earned the starting spot as a junior based on his work ethic.”

With these six lynchpins in place, Wall was confident that he had assembled a group of young men who each brought fundamentally sound skills coupled with a remarkably superior resolve to give whatever it took to establish a solid foundation for Hood men’s soccer.

After a few weeks of preseason training, Wall and his tribe journeyed to Towson, Md., on September 2, 2004 to square off against Goucher College in the first intercollegiate men’s soccer game involving Hood College. Wall and his players recall the experience with exquisite detail.

“It really was a great day for Hood,” said Wall. “It was great for the players, great for the parents, to see a whole bunch of guys running around at Goucher that have Hood on. It was exciting.”

“I remember that personally I was really nervous,” said Donnelly. “I didn’t know what to expect at the college level with the different speed of play and more intensity.”

“I wasn’t nervous because teams didn’t have any expectations for us so we couldn’t really let anyone down,” said McCarrick. “I remember being really excited to be out there and I think the whole team was just happy to be part of a pretty big event in the college’s history.”

“I had a lot of thoughts on my mind,” said Rabara. “Riding the bus towards the game, I was like wow, this is my first collegiate game. I wonder how different it would be from high school or club or pick-up soccer. It was SO different. When you arrived at Goucher, you could see the campus and then you went to the field and saw how nice it was and you saw the goals and how professional the setting was, that was kind of like something that made me a little anxious and nervous before the game. Charlie (Covell) came down and took photos of the game. It was a pretty big deal. Looking back at the pictures now, we were so tiny. I can’t believe that’s how we looked. We were anxious to play but we were pretty focused as well and we wanted to win.”

The stats from that game suggested that it should have been a lop-sided affair – Shots: Goucher 19, Hood 2. Corner kicks: Goucher 7, Hood 1. But, despite the disparity on paper, the Blazers battled from the opening whistle to the final horn and came away on the short end of a narrow 1-0 decision. After a scoreless first half in which the Blazers were outshot 11-0, the Gophers’ lone score of the game came in the 68th minute of the second half. However, Noonan recounts his shot that came inches away from knotting the game at a goal apiece.

“With 10 minutes left in the game I took a shot from like 40 yards out, I don’t even know why I took it,” said Noonan. “I don’t know if the goalie was real far off his line and I saw it so I just ripped it and I ended up hitting the crossbar and it bounced down on the goal and then he saved it.”

Regardless of the outcome of that historic contest, Wall was beaming with pride when he gathered his troops back in the huddle on the sideline and expressed how proud they made him and everyone associated with Hood College.

“I think one of the things I always do say is ‘you always put a smile on your face and enjoy it and give it everything you got’,” said Wall. “You always have to mention that you are representing the school and that brings a lot of weight. So we were trying to establish that and the guys did a great job from the beginning. We battled and we lost 1-0. I think that gave us life. It gave us the belief that we were something, not nothing. That was pretty inspirational.”

Hood’s next trip was down the southern tip of the state for a tournament at perennial powerhouse Salisbury University, an unenviable task for any club, much less the second intercollegiate game in a program’s inaugural season. The Blazers failed to find the back of the net in those two games against the Sea Gulls and St. Mary’s College, but took from it some memorable moments.

“The second and third games of our season we played in a tournament at Salisbury and we played them first and they were ranked in the top 20,” said McCarrick. “We lost 7-nil and then we came back the next day and we lost to St. Mary’s 5-nil but they called the game a half hour early because it was just a monsoon. I just remember I’ve never been so wet or so cold and I’ve never seen a field that was such mud and we’re out there in the battle trenches trying to defend against these guys and just getting slaughtered and they finally called the game.”

“Salisbury was our first tournament away and they were ranked number two in the nation,” said Wachter. “The next game against St. Mary’s, the ball would just stop in a puddle on the field and start rolling, it was ridiculous. I wanted to go home so bad. But what an experience though! You couldn’t kick the ball without it stopping in a puddle.”

The next week the Blazers finally got to showcase their talents for the first time in front of their classmates, friends and the entire Hood community on September 11, 2004 when Hood hosted LaRoche College at Thomas Athletic Field. Rabara recalls the game well; one of his fondest memories of Hood soccer came in the 37th minute of the first half when he became the first player to score a goal in Hood men’s soccer history.

“Craig took the free kick and he was about 35 yards out on the left-hand side,” said Rabara. “He took a left-footed kick and it came into the box and I tried to lose my man while I was in the box. Eventually I did and the ball just came to my head and I put it to the right-hand side of the goal and the goalie just watched it. I was so thrilled and excited that I scored because the last three games we had chances to score and we were close but that was the first time we had a decent shot on target.

“It felt really good, my teammates came up to me and gave me high-fives and congratulated me. It was a good feeling. I scored in the scrimmages but this one it was in the actual game and it actually counted and meant something.”

It also meant that Hood had a lead on an opponent for the first time ever, and the Blazers managed to maintain that advantage at halftime. In the second half, Danijel Pajic netted the equalizer in the 54th minute to knot the game at 1-1. But just over six minutes later, Ben Snyder, a transfer from Goucher and three-time co-captain, took a feed from Sam Hofmann and sent one past Redhawk keeper Cory Baird to regain the lead for the Blazers.

Hood was less than 10 minutes away from its first-ever soccer victory when Pajic was taken down in the box and awarded a penalty kick in the 83rd minute. Pajic was able to convert and the two clubs were deadlocked once again at 2-2. That score would hold up at the end of regulation and the crowd of 200-plus was treated to Hood’s first ever overtime affair.

In the first overtime session, the Redhawks managed three shots and the Blazers one, but neither team found the back of the net. Keeper Chad Baker played brilliantly, turning away 12 shots on the day including one in the first overtime which preserved the 2-2 tie and sent the thriller into double overtime. McCarrick recalls the electric atmosphere on campus that day.

“All the parents of all the players were there and there were all types of fans because it was the first week of school and all the kids came out to support us,” said McCarrick. “The atmosphere was great and our team played well. After the first overtime it was still tied then they scored with like two minutes left in the second overtime. That was disappointing but it felt good to know that our team played so well at home and we definitely competed.”

Now 0-4, the squad had a much-deserved week off before its next contest against Lancaster Bible College on September 18.

On a sunny yet blustery fall day at Thomas Athletic Field, Wall remembers this game as a turning point for the program. After engaging in a 1-1 tie with the Chargers at half, Hood outscored LBC 3-1 in the final 45 minutes to secure Hood’s first ever men’s soccer triumph.

“When we got our first ever victory over Lancaster Bible, the guys did great, it kind of all came together,” said Wall. “The guys, with their competitive nature, knowing hey, we can compete, we need to and we’re going to give it a go and try it. They were so excited. From a team standpoint, it was important for us to win that game, for faith alone.”

“We wanted it more than anything else, because we lost our last game in overtime and we came back and won this one because we didn’t want to give up,” said Rabara.

Wall and the Blazers used the momentum gained from that exhilarating win the rest of the season and showed the remaining eight opponents on the docket that they had heart, hustle and tenacity that would eventually translate into more victories. Although Hood did not win another game that season and scored just eight goals in 13 contests in 2004, the players were convinced that this was the start of something special.

“One of the things I learned from a lot of our players is the results don’t matter,” said Wall. “I learned that it’s about representing Hood as best you can. I see them fighting to the end and they want to be here, they don’t have to be here. I couldn’t be prouder of these guys, all the way down the line.”

The next fall, Wall witnessed one of the most incredible turnarounds ever in Division III in which the Blazers went from 1-12 in 2004 to 8-4-1 in 2005. The 7.5-game improvement tied for the third-best turnaround in all of NCAA Division III from 2004 to 2005. Hood outscored the opposition 39-17 and recorded five shutouts. One of Donnelly’s fondest memories of that sophomore season came on September 20 against Neumann College.

“Neumann was a team that beat us the first year (2-1) and we knew coming in that this was a true measurement game for our program coming from freshman year to sophomore year,” said Donnelly. “They were a team that may have been a little more skilled than us but we knew if we worked hard we could beat them. It was probably our best performance as a team since I’ve been here.”

Guillaume Fargas notched the lone score of the contest in the 69th minute in a 1-0 Hood win, a game in which the Blazers were outshot 14-5. Olorunfemi recalls a lot about that sophomore season, mostly due to the athletic prowess of Fargas.

“My favorite memories are from sophomore year when Guillaume was here,” said Olorunfemi. “I felt like because of Guillaume we had someone to look up to and we had someone who was a leader, not from his speaking but from his walk and just his playing.” Fargas accounted for 11 of Hood’s 39 goals that season and assisted on six others.

In 2006, Wall and the Blazers embarked on yet another chapter in the annals of Hood soccer when Hood joined the highly competitive Capital Athletic Conference. The league was comprised of institutions from Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania and included some of the top soccer programs in NCAA Division III such as Salisbury University and York College (Pa.).

To prepare for the new structure of competing in a conference, Wall and his players developed a pseudo-conference of their own to help stress the importance of league tilts during the second half of the 2005 season.

“The second half of our sophomore year we made up our own conference,” said Noonan. “It was a little thing Coach Wall made up and we came up with a name for it (“Friends United”) and it was basically to prepare us for our last six or seven games like they were conference games. It was supposed to help us like if we were in a conference we need this many points or we have to beat this team. Whatever teams we played in the second half of the year were in the conference.”

Hood matched its win total from 2005 that year and recorded its first ever CAC victory over Gallaudet University on September 30, 2006. That would stand as Hood’s lone conference win of its inaugural CAC campaign.

However, two non-conference wins from 2006 paid dividends for several players. That year the Blazers defeated regional rivals Frostburg State University and McDaniel College by identical 2-1 margins at home.

“Beating McDaniel and Frostburg back-to-back was one of my best memories,” said Noonan, who scored one of the two goals against Frostburg and assisted on a Rabara tally against McDaniel. “Two teams we weren’t supposed to beat and we beat them both at home. To this day both teams are still {upset} that we beat them. We knew what we were up against we knew it was going to be a battle. They were similar teams to us but they had been established and they bring in decent recruits. They had recruits that were looking at Frostburg and Hood and McDaniel and they came to the game and we showed them up. It was kind of a benchmark for us. They beat us 3-0 sophomore year with a couple All-Americans on their team so going from that to beating them was pretty cool for us.”

“Beating McDaniel and Frostburg at home, those were huge games,” said Wachter. “Coach Wall said before the game, these are big games for us. We rival with these schools for recruits, so how great would it be to actually beat them. He said let’s show what Hood’s all about and hopefully people are looking at Hood and these guys and they’ll say oh, well, Hood beat these guys. Plus they were hard and very physical, it came down to the wire.”

As a young program, Hood was accustomed to tall tasks. The Blazers qualified for the CAC tournament as the No. 8 seed. Their first-round opponent was none other than the third-ranked team in NCAA Division III, the York College Spartans, who came into the contest with a 34-game unbeaten string. York outshot Hood 22-1 on the day, but the unrelenting aggressiveness of the Hood backfield and the stellar poise of freshman netminder Shawn Fernholz yielded only three goals to the Spartans. York went on to win the league crown and advance to the elite eight of the Division III NCAA Tournament.

In August 2007, these six recruits returned to the pitch one final time to try and strive even further in their quest to establish Hood as a contender in the conference, the region and the nation. While the win-loss record may not indicate progress, Wall and the players know better.

“We’re a lot better than the teams we played that freshman year,” said Donnelly. “If we played that schedule again we’d probably do really well.”

McCarrick can hardly believe that four years have passed so swiftly.

“It’s hard to believe it’s senior year,” said McCarrick. “It really didn’t set in until the past couple weeks. I am definitely going to miss playing soccer.”

That sentiment was evident Sunday, October 21, 2007 when McCarrick and the five other members of Wall’s original recruiting class walked out onto Thomas Athletic Field for their final intercollegiate contest.

The Blazers celebrated Senior Day with their family and friends before their contest with Randolph College, which coincidentally pitted two institutions which could not have bared a closer resemblance. Formerly Randolph-Macon Women’s College for 115 years, the college officially became co-ed and changed its name to Randolph College on July 1, 2007. The men’s soccer program was in its first season and came into the contest with Hood showing a record of 2-8-1.

Less than two minutes into the game, McCarrick took a cross from Rabara and flicked the ball behind him and into the left corner of the net to stake the Blazers to an early 1-0 lead. The Wildcats knotted the score at 1-1 just over five minutes later and eventually took a 2-1 lead in the 34th minute of the first half.

In the 74th minute of the second half, Quinn Miller scored the equalizer for Hood off a rebound and the two squads remained deadlocked at the end of regulation.

A golden goal decided the first home game for Wall and his first recruiting class and the same would be true in the final home game of their Hood careers. And who more fitting to register that golden goal than Noonan, the program’s all-time leader in every offensive statistical category. He blasted a penalty kick past Randolph’s reserve keeper to propel the Blazers to a 3-2 overtime victory, sweet redemption indeed for the heartbreaking double overtime defeat in Hood’s initial home contest.

The program has made huge strides in four short years and with Wall’s leadership will only continue to attract more local talent. Wall’s primary hopes for his players are simple.

“We have this one major cornerstone of our program which is anytime we do cross the white lines we give it everything we have and we just leave it out there,” said Wall. “The other expectation is to represent Hood as best as we can.”

Wall will always hold this group of six in the highest regard as the pioneers for the program, the ones who took his pledge to heart and established those values as their personal creed.

“People always come and go but these six guys stuck with it and that speaks to their values,” said Wall. “If I could leave anything in a trophy case for my legacy as a coach here, it would not be the game ball from our first win at Lancaster Bible. It would be the soccer ball with all these six guys’ signatures on it who stuck with it and never gave up and gave it everything they had.”

And right alongside the signatures, the words “fun”, “journey”, “adversity”, “experience” and “memorable”.