College soccer: The long road to Amherst College’s national championship, and a belief in “embracing the crazy”

The Amherst College men’s soccer team celebrates after winning the NCAA Division III national championship last weekend in Las Vegas. PHOTO BY IAN MOULE
Published: 12-13-2024 6:33 PM |
AMHERST — Justin Serpone’s office is chaotic. Aside from the seven NESCAC tournament plaques that hang perfectly from the wall behind his desk and the 100-plus framed pictures of every player he’s ever coached that sit across from him, items are everywhere.
On the floor, on his two desks, on the cabinets, on the chairs – his office is littered with stuff. The Amherst College men’s soccer head coach hasn’t cleaned it in four years, and after winning the NCAA Division III national title last weekend, Serpone doesn’t see why he should start now.
“I know I should probably clean it,” he said, “but I say that every year. We just won a national championship though, so maybe I’ll keep it like this.”
When Amherst defeated Connecticut College 4-3 in penalty kicks in the finals, it stood as the Mammoths’ second D3 crown in Serpone’s 17 seasons (the other coming in 2015). Amherst has been to four of the last five national title games (2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024), and the Mammoths have made the NCAA tournament in each year under Serpone. They haven’t won less than a dozen games since Serpone took over in 2007, and they’ve yet to have more than three losses in conference play.
That kind of success doesn’t happen overnight. Serpone has built something special at Amherst, although he’ll never take the credit for it.
“None of this is possible with out him,” Amherst senior defender Ben Clark-Eden said of his head coach. “He knows it, but won’t say it. The culture and the precedent that he sets, the way he brings people together to buy into this one thing, which is soccer, is incredible. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and never will again.”
Serpone looks for a certain type of person and player when recruiting throughout the year. Where they’re from or what their background is isn’t important. Amherst rosters players from Georgia, California, Lithuania, England, Florida, Minnesota, Bermuda, Ghana, Colorado – the list could go on.
Yet despite 32 players on the team coming from different parts of the world, Serpone found one common trait among them all.
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“They are a stubborn bunch of dudes,” Serpone said. “We may not win every game, but we won’t ever go away.”
That notion became increasingly evident after the Mammoths continued to find their way back into the national championship game time and time again. They lost in the 2019 final to Tufts, and following a COVID-canceled 2020 season, they returned to the big game in 2021 against Connecticut College. The Camels got the best of Amherst 4-1 in PKs. But two seasons later, the Mammoths were back. Once more though, they fell short in the finals, losing 2-1 in overtime to St. Olaf in 2023.
But just as Serpone described, his team had no plans of that being their last trip to the championship.
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The overtime loss to St. Olaf weighed heavily on Serpone, and when spring practice came back in March, he wasn’t ready to even think about another full season. He told his team he was still processing and mourning a third national title loss in the last four years. He needed more time.
When players returned toward the end of the summer though, it was business as usual. Amherst couldn’t wait to get back at it.
Their excitement was met with more tribulation, as two of the Mammoths’ best players – both of whom were regarded as top midfielders in the country – went down with season-ending injuries right away. Ignacio Cubeddu and Laurens ten Cate played a combined 20 minutes all year. Amherst needed to figure out how to fill their shoes.
And while the injury bug plagued the Mammoths, sickness did, too. More than half of the team had to sit out one of Amherst’s biggest non-conference games of the season, a Sept. 24 bout with Babson.
“It just spread throughout the entire team, and it was all captured in this one moment going up against Babson, a team that’s nationally ranked and ended up making it to the Elite Eight this year,” Amherst senior forward Fynn Hayton-Ruffner said. “There are like 15 guys, maximum, in the locker room getting ready for the game. Everyone else is outside wearing a mask. We ended up getting a tie in a game that had big implications for our ranking at the end of the year.”
None of that fazed Amherst, it only brought them closer. Thinking back to the adversity that the Mammoths had been through in years past, injuries and illnesses were additional bumps in the road, and they were prepared to deal with it.
“We had a belief that we were going to figure our stuff out, because, at least from my four years here, that’s what we’ve been best at,” Clark-Eden said. “It feels like every year, something goes wrong immediately. And then we have to respond and react to it and figure it out. We never felt sorry for ourselves. The attitude was just like, ‘OK, that happened. How are we going to figure it out?’”
After the Babson game, Amherst won eight of its next nine games to finish the regular season, setting up a heavyweight battle with Connecticut College in the NESCAC quarterfinals – a rematch of the 2021 national championship. And in similar fashion, the Camels won in penalties to knock Amherst out of contention for the conference crown.
A team meeting ensued. Amherst knew it would receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney, but the Mammoths had to find another gear to make their seemingly annual deep run in the tournament. The passion shown in that gathering flawlessly defined the Mammoths’ program.
“I think what’s unique about Amherst soccer and why we’re so relentless is the emotion we put into things,” Serpone said. “There’s nothing inauthentic about it. We don’t know how to do it any other way. We’re probably not the most popular team because of it, but it’s fully all-in emotion. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”
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Heading into the tournament, Amherst had lost three of its last four games decided by PKs. In order to win a championship, a team is more often than not going to have to win a game in penalties. Serpone shuffled his PK lineup ahead of the tournament, deciding that he would send out his best five penalty takers regardless of class.
The Mammoths cruised by Neumann University in round one, but that new lineup was put to use in round two against Stevens. Mohammed Nuhu, Hayton-Ruffner and Jacob Lahlou buried kicks to put Amherst through to the Sweet 16. A thrilling 3-2 double overtime victory over Wisconsin-Superior led the Mammoths to the Elite Eight, where they beat Wisconsin-Eau Claire 2-1.
They were back in the Final Four, and the massive wins over a pair of Wisconsin schools propelled them there. Serpone’s pregame speeches throughout the tournament were second to none.
“The feelings that we all get from listening to coach speak before a big game, I’ll never forget that,” Clark-Eden said.
One more speech got Amherst through Middlebury, 2-1, and into another national championship. Who was there waiting? Connecticut College, of course.
One hundred and 10 minutes of scoreless soccer led to penalties, exactly where the Mammoths lost to the Camels in the 2021 title and in the NESCAC quarterfinals earlier in the year. Nuhu, Lahlou, freshman Jacob Dinzeo and senior Simon Kalinauskas buried penalties, and Amherst got its sweet revenge against its rival on Dec. 7 in Las Vegas.
Even if he couldn’t bear to watch, Serpone’s nerves turned to joy when he heard the Amherst faithful roar as Kalinauskas’ attempt found the back of the net. In so many instances the Mammoths came up a sliver shy. But they used those moments of failure – although Serpone wouldn’t call it that – as fuel to the fire, and it’s made this past week so enjoyable for the 46-year old head coach.
“It’s impossible to think about this year without thinking about the last five years,” Serpone said. “The story isn’t complete without that being front and center. There are 418 teams in Division III soccer, and the fact that we went to three of the last four finals and had our hearts broken, that adds 1,000 times the meaning to what’s going on. I couldn’t be happier, and I want to make sure that every single one of those guys that played on the 2019 team, 2021 team, 2023 team feel just as invested and happy as the 32 guys on this current team. Because we truly feel that we couldn’t have done it without them.”
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Local police met Amherst’s bus as it entered Hadley last Sunday night, and they provided an escort back to campus – where a large group of Mammoths supporters awaited their newly-crowned national champs.
“When we realized that’s what they were doing, we were like, ‘Oh my, this is ridiculous,’” Clark-Eden said with a huge smile on his face, referring to the escort. “They shut off the road. It made us feel amazing. And there were a really good amount of people here Sunday night. It was amazing that many people came out in the cold.”
An unwavering amount of love for not only those currently on the team, but those that have come before, a colossal commitment to the sport they love and an unbreakable mindset has brought the Mammoths to unthinkable heights.
Serpone doesn’t want it any other way. The culture in Amherst really is different.
“We embrace the crazy,” Serpone said. “And that’s because we are f****** crazy.”
So perhaps Serpone prefers his office to be disorganized and muddled – or even crazy, some might say. After all, he’s built his program on the term, and it’s turned Amherst College into a national powerhouse that isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.