Bucknell University Athletics
O'Brien is Chief of Bucknell's Boat
9/28/2009 8:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
Sept. 28, 2009
By Jon Terry, Bucknell Athletic Communications
Late in the first half of Bucknell's 2009 men's soccer season opener against La Salle, Conor O'Brien settled a pass from teammate Sean King just inside the midfield stripe. Sensing two defenders charging from behind, O'Brien spun toward them, and the pair of Explorers took the bait. Without even the slightest glance in that direction, O'Brien slipped a pass with the outside of his left foot to a streaking Tommy McCabe in wide-open space along the now-vacated left flank. With plenty of room to operate, McCabe sent a cross toward the far post that barely missed the foot of a sliding Luke Joyner.
While this combination did not result in a goal, it was a beautiful illustration of what makes O'Brien one of the most decorated players in program history. At five feet, ten inches and 155 pounds "on a good day," as he puts it, O'Brien is not the most physically imposing player on the pitch. But what sets him apart are the soccer instincts and an unsurpassed field vision that constantly keeps him a step ahead of the opposition.
"I'm not the fastest player, and I'm not the biggest," admits O'Brien, "but I think the way I read the game is probably what makes me successful. I anticipate pretty well and I think I have good vision going to goal."
That innate sense of the game has helped put the Bucknell senior co-captain in some elite company. A two-time All-Patriot League selection, O'Brien was named the 2008 Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year after totaling seven goals and eight assists for 22 points. He entered his final season with 15 goals and 16 assists in his career, and over the summer he was named to the Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Award Watch List, placing him in the running for the college soccer player of the year award for the second straight year.
And what a start it has been to his senior season. In the first six games of the year O'Brien produced five goals and three assists, with three of those goals game-winners. Of Bucknell's first seven goals of the season, O'Brien scored five of them and assisted on the other two. Two of those goals came in consecutive 1-0 wins over Hartwick and Syracuse at the Mayor's Cup, leading to his selection as the tournament's offensive MVP. Entering last Wednesday's game against Saint Francis, O'Brien had at least one goal or assist in 11 straight games dating back to last season, a new school record. He will graduate as one of the school's all-time leading scorers.
O'Brien credits his knowledge of the game to his father, Stephen, a former collegiate soccer player himself at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Stephen coached Conor and his younger brother Brendan (now a sophomore on the Roger Williams soccer team) at the youth level. As he worked his way up to the Long Island Selects and various state-level club teams, Conor became a connoisseur of "The Beautiful Game."
"When I was younger I watched so many games with my dad," O'Brien recalls. "We would watch any game we could find on television, anything from European soccer, especially the English Premier League. In order to become a better player, not only do you need to play but you need to watch the game being played at a higher level. I like to be creative going forward. I like to try and do those sneaky passes behind defenders, balls that 90 percent of players don't see. Sometimes they don't work out, sometimes they do. But when they do, that might be the play that wins you the game."
"Conor is very skilled, and he complements that by being one of the smartest guys out there," says Bison head coach Brendan Nash. "I hesitate to call him a `coach on the field,' because sometimes when you give a player that label, it implies that he isn't very good. That's obviously not true with him, but what he does is process the game like a coach. When we make a tactical change, he knows why we are doing it, he knows how to communicate it to his teammates, and he knows how to attack it."
As a junior at St. Anthony's High School on Long Island, O'Brien's game had progressed to the point where he was now focused on soccer year-round, pushing to the back burner his other favorite sports such as baseball, track, skiing and snowboarding. He was named the MVP of the Tampa Bay Sun Bowl while playing for the Long Island Rough Riders club in 2004, and a year later he helped his high school team win its first state championship.
At the same time, O'Brien and his father sent letters to 45 colleges, and the interest level was high. Interestingly, he ultimately narrowed his choice to three distinctly different college programs: Bowdoin, Providence and Bucknell. Bowdoin is a Division III program at an elite academic school in Maine. Providence offered the lure of the Big East and perhaps a greater focus on soccer, while Bucknell presented a little bit of everything, from great academics to high-quality, Division I soccer.
"Eventually I decided that I wanted to give Division I a shot, so I ruled out Bowdoin, but I had always said that I wanted to use soccer to get into a great school academically, and Bowdoin is a very tough school to get into," O'Brien offers. "I made official visits to both Providence and Bucknell, and when I came to Bucknell I had a much better time and felt more comfortable than anywhere else. I asked myself, `if I get injured on day one of preseason of my freshman year and can never play again, where would I rather be?" And Bucknell was the answer."
O'Brien did not need long to make an impact. He started all 23 matches his freshman year and contributed to Bucknell's first Patriot League championship. He scored his first collegiate goal in a league win over Army, and he assisted on the clinching goal against Navy in the regular-season finale, a victory that the Bison needed just to get into the postseason. After Bucknell defeated Lafayette in penalty kicks in the championship match, O'Brien was in on the sequence that led to Mark Schmiegel's overtime goal against George Mason in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
While he looked fit and confident while playing major minutes as a freshman, O'Brien admits there was a significant adjustment period.
"It is definitely a lot tougher than it looks," he says. "When you get to Division I soccer every player is big, strong, fast and athletic. It is really the athleticism that is such a big thing. In club ball, you can get away with certain things, but in college you have to be athletic. A lot of guys here played multiple sports and probably could play other sports in college. To be honest, the adjustment period has never really ended. I'm a better player now, but I am still learning all the time."
After his freshman year, O'Brien returned to Long Island and helped the Terryville Fire club team win a U-18 national championship. That moment proved to be an awakening, one of those "I-can-really-do-this" epiphanies that many elite athletes experience.
"I played every game my freshman year and got a lot of confidence from that, but it was when I went home over the summer and we won the national championship is when I realized that I should be doing more with soccer," says O'Brien, who was named the BigAppleSoccer.com Youth Player of the Year after the national title run. "I had been given an opportunity, and I really wanted to prove that I deserved it. I think coming into my sophomore year at Bucknell I really felt like I had something to prove, not just to my team, but to the league and to the country."
The work paid off, as he totaled seven goals and five assists for 19 points, which ranked second in the Patriot League. He earned Second Team All-Patriot League and All-Mid-Atlantic Region honors, and he was playing his best soccer at the most important juncture, scoring five goals in a six-game run to end the regular season.
A year later he produced seven goals and eight assists, resulting in a league-high 22 points. He earned First Team All-Patriot League honors for the first time, was selected as the league's offensive player of the year and repeated as an all-region pick after recording a point in 13 of the team's 19 games.
While that U-18 experience helped set the stage for his big sophomore year, O'Brien is coming off another very productive summer that seems to have carried over in the fall of 2009. O'Brien spent the year with the Cary (N.C.) Clarets of the Premier Development League, and he helped that squad make a run all the way to the national semifinals. Part of a roster made up largely of Atlantic Coast Conference players from N.C. State, Duke and Wake Forest, O'Brien played in all the games and had two goals and three assists.
"The team was just phenomenal," says O'Brien. "My coaches (Dewan Bader and Henry Gutierrez) both played professional soccer, and they introduced me to a lot of people down there. It was a whole different level that I had never been able to experience. There was a 35 or 40-man roster, and kids would come and try out every day. We would have an 11-v-11 game every day, and you always had to earn your spot. My vision and my touch is so much better now after playing at such a high level this summer. When you play 20 games in three months, and then come back to Bucknell to prepare to play another 20 games in three months, you don't miss a beat."
Now he is a senior and still scoring at a dizzying pace, but he has also matured into a leader. Harkening back to his own freshman year, when he looked up to players such as Andrew Loia and Joe Mellott, O'Brien is now trying to mentor this year's highly touted rookie crop.
"It is too difficult to believe that this is already my senior year," O'Brien says with a laugh. "It is weird being at practice and looking around at all the young guys, thinking that I am one of the oldest ones here and that a lot of those guys really are looking up to me. You can see that when I am talking to them and they actually listen, take it in, and then go out and try to do it."
Early in the 2009 season, O'Brien has been teamed up front with the likes of freshmen Brendan Burgdorf, CK Kumah and Josh Plump, and sophomores Luke Joyner and Ryan Sappington. For a player who relies so much on instincts and knowing where his teammates are at all times, the transition has been remarkably quick.
"It is definitely tough," O'Brien says of learning the mannerisms of so many new faces. "They are young, and sometimes they know what runs to make, but sometimes they are just wasting energy. But they are learning very quickly, and this freshman class is very athletic and talented. They have the opportunity to do very well in their four years here."
"It is really interesting to watch our younger guys follow Conor's lead," says Nash. "Last year Conor was a captain as a junior, but we had so many seniors with strong opinions on what we should be doing that we would easily get out of sync. Now, everyone just does what Conor tells them to do, and everyone is on the same page. He and Pat Selwood, who is the captain of the defense, have really handled things well."
O'Brien would love to experience another Patriot League championship before he sets his sights on continuing his soccer career professionally. He has already begun putting together tapes and resumes with the hopes of being invited to the Major League Soccer scouting combine in January. In 2005, defender Michael Lookingland became the first Bucknell player to be drafted in MLS when Real Salt Lake took him with the 13th pick of the supplemental draft. O'Brien is striving to be the second.
His teammates often call him "C.O.B.," referring to his initials. But C.O.B. is also a naval term meaning "Chief of the Boat," who is the top-ranking enlisted sailor on a submarine. It's a deserving moniker for O'Brien, who has the Bison sailing on smooth seas so far this season.
