Team - Soccer
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019
The first Acadia men’s soccer team to capture the conference championship, the John Kehoe-coached 1996 Axemen squad was a special team in a lot of ways.
After a third-place finish in the regular season, Acadia lost just once in five games at the Atlantic conference championships and the CIAU nationals. The Axemen won three times in three days, which according to head coach Kehoe, “had never been done before.”
Kehoe had “ramped up the fitness” at the Axemen practices all season. “I felt this team would be up to the increase in fitness, and though not always happily, they met the grueling challenge.”
All the extra work paid off. At the AUAA playoffs on the turf at Dalhousie, Acadia opened with a 1-0 shutout over Moncton, on a goal by John MacIntyre, and qualified for the final with another 1-0 victory, this time over St. F.X., on a Steve Wynn marker.
Acadia’s opponent in the conference final was Dalhousie, defending national champions and first-place finishers in the regular season with a 10-1-2 record. The final was played in blustery and wintry conditions, which turned out to be to Acadia’s advantage against the more skilled Tigers. As Nik Cooper recalls, “having led the league in ties, we were very comfortable in close games.”
The contest remained scoreless heading to overtime, and then to a shootout where the Axemen converted all five of their penalty kicks, by all-Canadian Mike Cino, Cooper, MacIntyre, Wynn, and Jay Robinson, to walk off the field with a hard-earned, and well-deserved, 1-0 victory.
Ironically, according to Kehoe, Acadia had been practicing shootouts all season. “Our goal,” he recalls, “if we met Dal in the playoffs was to shut them down and get them into a penalty shootout.” At an early-season practice, he chose five shooters “and encouraged the others to challenge the five I selected.”
Acadia advanced to the CIAU nationals hosted by York University in Toronto. The competition was intense, with each of the first four tournament games requiring a shootout to determine a winner.
The Axemen opened against York, and after a scoreless regulation time and overtime, prevailed four goals to two in a shootout. Acadia dropped a 2-0 decision to Western Ontario, the eventual silver medalists, in their second game and failed to qualify for the medal round. Acadia's Kris Cooper was named to the tournament all-star team.
The 1996 Axemen had eight graduating players, and they had more than paid their dues. Acadia had recorded just four wins in the 1993 and 1994 seasons combined. In 1995, the Axemen qualified for the playoffs on the final day of the regular season.
Nik Cooper describes the 1996 Axemen, their character forged by adversity, as “16 of the closest teammates you could ever find. The fabric of that team was unbreakable.”
The Axemen “were as blue-collar as you could get. The defense was our strength, and we embodied the Harry Truman quote, ‘it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit’.”
What the team might have lacked in star power (Cino was the only Axemen all-star), “we made up for in effort. We didn’t always win the game, but we never got outworked.”
Teammate Jay Robinson describes the 1996 squad as “a player’s team.” Coach Kehoe “could see and sense how strong the character of our leadership group was, and he trusted them like no coach that I can remember. He had a strong bond with the players, and I don’t think I ever saw him ‘lose it’.”
The Acadia Sports Hall of Fame is pleased to induct, in the team category, the 1996 Axemen soccer team, a resilient championship squad with an unparalleled work ethic, togetherness, and team spirit.