Max Zieky was starting his senior year at UConn, captain of the soccer team. He figured he’d been around long enough to have a little fun with his coach.
After getting a few stitches on a cut on his thumb, he asked the doctor to put a large removable cast covering his entire arm, then he walked into Ray Reid’s office to give him the, you know, bad news.
“Ray said, ‘Stop right there,’ and he picked up the phone to call the doctor,” Zeiky remembered. “Then I took off the cast. He threw all the papers off his desk and yelled, ‘Get out of here.’ Outside, (associate head coach) John Deeley came up and said, ‘Hey, it was a good joke, but don’t do that again.’”
On Friday night, 25 years later, Zeiky walked into the soccer office at UConn to find Reid again. “Hey, where’s your brace?,” Reid roared, before they hugged.
The stories, never old, came back as if it had all just happened. The Huskies of 2000 were all business when it mattered most, their year-long mission to win the elusive national championship completed with a 2-0 victory over Creighton in the NCAA final. Chris Gbandi, who won the Herman Trophy (the soccer Heisman) that year, scored the winning goal on a free kick, with Darin Lewis adding an insurance score in the 85th minute.
Four years ago, Gbandi succeeded Reid as head coach. Now, his teammates were watching, supporting as the Huskies picked up a pivotal win over Big East rival St. John’s.
“That’s what the pressure was I put on myself today,” Gbandi said, after UConn’s 1-0 victory. “These guys are all here celebrating, and I couldn’t imagine hanging out with them after not giving them a win.”
Twenty-six members of the championship team are part of a group chat on “What’s App,” Zeiky says, and many of them all made it back to campus for the reunion Friday.
Ray Reid, Chris Gbandi celebrate UConn’s national men’s soccer title in 2000.
“What a great group of guys,” Reid said. “It was a focused group. When your team wins one of these things, that group stays bonded forever.”
UConn won a soccer championship in 1948, the pre-NCAA days, and Joe Morrone’s 1981 championship team was a campus gold standard for a lot of years. Reid, who’d won two D-II championships at Southern Connecticut, came to UConn in 1996 and the Huskies began pounding on the door again.
“The biggest thing for us was the year prior to that,” said Rui Fernandes, from Bridgeport, a sophomore on that team and now director and co-founder of the Florida Soccer School. “Losing and coach leaving us there, having a sour taste in our mouth.”
UConn lost in four overtimes to Santa Clara on an own goal in the national semifinals in 1999, and rather than fly home immediately, Reid had the Huskies stay in Charlotte and watch Indiana and Santa Clara play for the title. It stuck in the craw and brought the team closer as Reid, ever the motivator, expected.
“We knew we were good, we had good soccer players,” said Mansour Ndiaye, who came from New York and later earned a PhD at UConn, where he still teaches. “But we got along, we liked each other. At least from my vantage point, that was the difference.”
The 2000 team allowed only one goal in the NCAA Tournament. They tied Clemson late, and won in overtime on Cesar Cuellar’s bicycle kick to knock off the No. 2 seed. Then the Huskies came home to beat Brown, 1-0, on a goal by Herman Trophy runner-up Brent Rahim on a frost-covered pitch, then finally returned to Charlotte to beat SMU and Creighton in the Final Four.
“It really comes down to, the quintessential essence of a good team, everyone sacrificed individualism for the greater good of the team,” said Zeiky, from Glastonbury, who now leads a global sales force for Dell Technologies. “We had 26 guys, so many of them could have left and started, maybe got more playing time, but we all stayed, because it was more than just playing time. We were trying to accomplish something so difficult to achieve, and we really wanted to go down in history so we wouldn’t lose touch, we would come back together after 25 years.”
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After tailgating outside the refurbished Morrone Stadium, the 2000 Huskies took their seats for the game.
“You can see that now, things are on their way to where it used to be,” Ndiaye said. “I love what I see and I’m hopeful we’ll get back where UConn belongs.”
The 2000 champs, introduced at halftime, gathered again afterward at the hotel on campus.
“The brotherhood is the biggest thing I miss from that group,” Gbandi said. “We’re still in contact today. In college athletics today, there are just so many different layers. You just want to make sure when guys come here, there’s a brotherhood, there’s a connection, and they say ‘after my time at UConn, I’m still going to be in contact with these guys.’”
The Huskies (8-3-3), trying to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018, are in the mix, in the 30s in RPI. They’re also in the fight for one of four conference playoff spots after Charlie Holmes’ goal in the 83rd minute separated them from St. John’s in the standings.
“Chris’ team this year is much better, headed in the right direction,” Reid said. “I want to be here when Chris wins his.”
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Sunday short takes
*London Jemison, the 6-foot-8 freshman from Bloomfield, played nine minutes for Alabama men’s basketball in its preseason game against Florida State Thursday, a 109-105 win. Jemison was 1 for 3 from the floor, missing a couple of threes, two points and one rebound. The Crimson Tide play St. John’s at The Garden Nov. 8.
*The Hartford Public Athletic Hall of Fame will celebrate four of the school’s historic figures on Nov. 15 at 1 p.m., unveiling a mural at the Field House. Honorees Marlon Starling, class of 1976, a two-time world welterweight champion, Pablo Franco (’73), a track sprinter with 17 individual first-place finishes, contributing to 10 state championships; Eddie Griffin (’62), an All-American basketball player who led two New England Championship teams and coach Larry Amann (1924-64), who won 35 state championships in cross country, swimming, and track will be honored with 7×10-foot banners. The event is free. Contact Mike Forrest (forrest.mike.r@gmail.com) for more information.
*Reminder: The Windsor High Athletic Hall of Fame banquet is Nov. 1 at 6 p.m., at La Notte in East Windsor. For tickets and info, contact Celeste Over at Sage Park Middle School, 860-687-2030.
*The Wolf Pack has decided who will wear the C and As on their sweaters for the 2025-26 season. Defenseman Casey Fitzgerald will be captain for the second straight season, forwards Anton Blidh and Justin Dowling and defenseman Connor Mackey will be alternate captains.
*The Springfield chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) will host a talk by Melissa Ludtke, who sued Major League Baseball in 1978 and secured the right to enter locker rooms for all women sportswriters, on Oct. 25 at 10 a.m. at the Richard Salter Storrs Library (693 Longmeadow Stt. in Longmeadow, Mass.). Jane McManus, long-time sportswriter and educator, author of “The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women’s Sports” and Ludtke, who detailed her historic case in “Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside,” will be discussing and signing copies of their books. The public is welcome. Parking and admission are free. More information is available at springfieldsabr.com and longmeadowlibrary.org.
*Jim Calhoun and I will be signing copies of our book, “More Than A Game: How the UConn Basketball Dynasty Was Built On a Culture Of Caring,” on Thursday at Saint Joseph’s “Flock Night” in West Hartford at 6 p.m., on Nov. 3 at the UConn bookstore, across from Gampel Pavilion from 5-7 p.m. before the men’s season opener. We will also be doing a Q&A and book signing for R.J. Julia’s in Middletown, Nov. 11 at 7 p.m.
U.S. women’s soccer team will have star Trinity Rodman back for its match at Rentschler Field
*Olympic gold medalist Alyssa Naeher, the Stratford native, will be honored before the U.S. women’s national soccer team plays Portugal at Rentschler Field Oct. 26 at 4 p.m. While Naeher, 37, one of the most accomplished goalkeepers in the sport’s U.S. history, will speak at Southern Connecticut State University’s Lyman Auditorium in New Haven on Friday at 7 p.m. Contact the school’s box office for tickets and information.
*After the UConn women’s basketball team defeated Boston College Monday there was a lot of enthusiasm over the debut of 5-4 grad student Emma LoPinto, who led BC to the national championship in lacrosse a couple of years ago, and is in fact one of the best players in the country. She’s decided to give basketball a whirl and hit a 3-pointer during her two minutes on the floor.
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Last word
There is more to winning the World Series than just “putting the ball in play.” In fact, there is no magic formula or sure-fire approach. A team can’t be specifically “built for the postseason.” If that were possible, the 1990s Braves, who had three Hall of Famers in their starting rotation for more than a decade, would have won more than once. The reason franchises rarely repeat, fall short despite the high-paid rosters or go long stretches between championships, is this: Getting through three or four rounds of playoffs is …. extremely … hard … to do. You put together the best team you can and trust the key players perform.
