Harvard's Bonnie Grows Tall

From The Boston Globe

Date: Thursday, December 3, 1987
Section: SPORTS
Page: 46

By Marvin Pave, Globe Staff

On an unbeaten Harvard soccer team that includes five residents of
the British Isles, you would probably pick out the bonnie old name of
Robert Bonnie as one of them.

But the junior back -- who played a standout game in Harvard's 3-0
NCAA quarterfinal victory over visiting Adelphi last Sunday -- isn't
from Scotland.

He grew up on a horse farm in suburban Louisville, and his mother is
chairwoman of the Kentucky Horse Park, a popular stop for tourists.

Bonnie is described by Harvard coach Mike Getman as a tenacious
defender and team leader on defense, "especially after Mark Pepper,
our captain, was injured early in the year," said Getman, whose team
plays San Diego State Saturday at Clemson, S.C., in the national
semifinals.

The other semifinal pits North Carolina vs. Clemson, with the final
scheduled for Sunday. New England and Ivy League champ Harvard
(14-0-3) is the lone undefeated team in Division 1.

How did Bonnie, a kid who grew up riding horses in Prospect, Ky.,
wind up on the Harvard soccer team?

First of all, at 6 feet 2 inches and 180 pounds, he's hardly jockey
size; second, he was able to play nine months of soccer a year
because Louisville had an indoor facility. As a freshman at St.
Francis High -- which didn't have a large enough enrollment to field a
football team -- Bonnie started on a soccer team that made the state
tournament.

Bonnie's next three years were spent at the Brooks School in North
Andover, where he played on a championship team his sophomore
year and was captain his senior year, when Brooks lost in the New
England final to Northfield-Mt. Hermon.

All the while, he was honing his skills as a midfielder whose strong
point was quickness and playing defense and whose drawback was
a lack of speed -- which he worked hard to improve.

Now he is considered Harvard's best man-to-man defender, whose
height is an advantage, according to first-year coach Getman. "His
height and timing make him almost unbeatable in the air," said
Getman. "Very rarely do you get a player who wins every single ball
in the air -- and I don't remember him losing one last Sunday."

Bonnie got a scare late in the Adelphi game when he strained his
knee blocking a shot. "I caught the player's foot and the ball," he
said. But there was no swelling, and Getman planned to hold Bonnie
out of practice until today.

Harvard never let Adelphi get started, seizing the momentum early on
first- half goals by Nick D'Onofrio and Paul Baverstock, then adding
another Baverstock score late in the contest.

When Harvard wasn't driving Adelphi crazy on the flanks, backs
Bonnie, Gian D'Ornellas, Andy Dale and Nick Gates were
consistently keeping Adelphi's forwards from in front of goalie
Stephen Hall, who has seven shutouts.

Getman said he's not sure his team can play any better than it did
against Adelphi. "If we can stay at that level, win or lose, I've got no
complaints
from here on in," he said. "If we continue at this level and somebody
beats us, then they deserve to win."

San Diego State, he said, is "very talented, especially up front, and
Robert and the rest of our backs will have their hands full."

Bonnie wasn't highly recruited out of prep school. "I was all-league
twice, but I scored just four goals and was primarily a defensive
midfielder, and I didn't play youth soccer," he said. Then came a
freshman year in
college that "was the worst season of my life," he said.

Bonnie suffered a stress fracture in his foot before the season, then
hurt his ankle after he resumed playing for the freshman and junior
varsity teams. ''I also had to work on my speed and footwork
because everything was so much faster than what I had been used
to," he said. So Bonnie got a job that summer working at soccer
camps back home and doing plenty of sprinting in his spare time.

He was inserted at stopper back his sophomore year in the fourth
game
because of injuries and never sat down again as Harvard made it to
the NCAA semifinals before bowing to eventual champion Duke.

Harvard isn't the only New England entry in the NCAA semifinals.
Southern Connecticut State is bidding for the Division 2 title at
Tampa, Fla., this weekend. Its first game is against the University of
Missouri-St. Louis. Southern Connecticut (15-1-3) is making its
13th postseason appearance under coach Bob Dikranian. The other
semifinalists are California State-Northridge and Tampa.