One of the two captains on the Maryland men's soccer team had only three college starts to his name coming into this year. Yet, after two devastating injuries, Kevin Tangney's become the inspiration for a Maryland team out to defend its second national championship in four years.
On Aug. 8, 2007, a group of Maryland men's soccer players got together for a 7-on-7 pickup game in the days leading up to the official start of preseason. Two years removed from the 2005 national championship run but primed with talent groomed through 2006, a feeling of optimism blew through College Park.
In their midst was a redshirt sophomore, Kevin Tangney, who had found his way onto the field after an entire season off of it. Tangney had missed all of 2006 with an ACL tear, suffered while in France for a regional team competition. But he'd rehabbed and thought, in some ways, he was better than before. Stronger. Faster.
He was the second generation of Terps in his family, after his mom, Joanne, came before him -- he was a kid, who, in the words of coach Sasho Cirovski, "breathes Maryland." When Tangney first visited College Park in 2004, he committed on the spot.
And now he ran on a field just 20 yards from his mom's old dorm with a dozen of his best friends, feeling the grass buckle beneath his feet and moving, circling, gliding along the pitch in a way he hadn't since before his leg first failed him in June of 2006.
Then, just four days before his first preseason since shredding the central fibers in his left knee, he planted to make a cut in open space and fell to the ground.
On Aug. 8, 2007, a group of Maryland men's soccer players got together for a 7-on-7 pickup game in the days leading up to the official start of preseason. Two years removed from the 2005 national championship run but primed with talent groomed through 2006, a feeling of optimism blew through College Park.
In their midst was a redshirt sophomore, Kevin Tangney, who had found his way onto the field after an entire season off of it. Tangney had missed all of 2006 with an ACL tear, suffered while in France for a regional team competition. But he'd rehabbed and thought, in some ways, he was better than before. Stronger. Faster.
He was the second generation of Terps in his family, after his mom, Joanne, came before him -- he was a kid, who, in the words of coach Sasho Cirovski, "breathes Maryland." When Tangney first visited College Park in 2004, he committed on the spot.
And now he ran on a field just 20 yards from his mom's old dorm with a dozen of his best friends, feeling the grass buckle beneath his feet and moving, circling, gliding along the pitch in a way he hadn't since before his leg first failed him in June of 2006.
Then, just four days before his first preseason since shredding the central fibers in his left knee, he planted to make a cut in open space and fell to the ground.
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