
A historically dominant season ends in cruel fashion for Penn men’s soccer.
For several minutes on the evening of November 24, Stas Korzeniowski lay on his back on the Rhodes Field grass. A couple of teammates tried to lift him off the ground but the 6-foot-4 senior barely budged. Fans slowly filtered out of the River Fields athletic facility, as cars on the Schuylkill Expressway buzzed by. It wasn’t until classmate Leo Burney came over that Korzeniowski finally lumbered to his feet. Then the two shared a warm embrace on a cold night.
For three months, Korzeniowski and Burney had been nearly perfect, lifting the Quakers to a third straight Ivy League regular season championship and helping them surge in the national rankings and to a No. 6 overall seed in the NCAA tournament.
But after earning a first-round bye in the NCAA tourney, the Quakers were upset by UMass, 1-0, in front of a packed home crowd at Rhodes Field on that chilly late November night, abruptly ending the collegiate careers of Korzeniowski, Burney, and the rest of Penn’s accomplished senior class.
“Players and coaches shouldn’t hang their heads in shame,” head coach Brian Gill said afterwards. “We did our best and on that night it didn’t wind up being good enough to be able to advance in the tournament. But it doesn’t take away from how storied the season was and, for the seniors, how impactful they’ve been in elevating the program.”
Gill and his assistant coaches were named the Ivy League and the United Soccer Coaches (USC) Northeast Region Staff of the Year for guiding the Quakers to a 14–4–1 overall record. Three of those victories were over nationally ranked teams, including a season-opening triumph over third-ranked Pittsburgh, and seven were against Ivy League foes as Penn finished perfect in the Ivies for the first time since 1971.
Korzeniowski and Burney were named the Ivy League Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year, respectively, and they were joined by goalkeeper Phillip Falcon III and midfielder Jack-Ryan Jeremiah on the USC’s All-Northeast Region First Team.
Gill noted that Korzeniowski and Burney have a “very special relationship.” Both were key players on the 2022 squad that won the Ivy League and then trounced Rutgers in the first round of the NCAA tournament [“Sports,” Jan|Feb 2023]. And both continued to help the program grow, drawing big-time fan support at Penn Park in 2022 and 2023 (when Rhodes Field was out of commission during the construction of the Ott Center) and back at their usual home field throughout the 2024 campaign.
Burney, who made a huge goal-line clearance against UMass, started all 19 matches this season and led a back line that allowed only 16 goals, while scoring four of his own.
And although he couldn’t score in his final game against UMass, Korzeniowski led the Quakers with 12 goals, five of which were of the game-winning variety, including the Ivy title-clincher at Princeton. “And what he does outside of scoring goals is really important to a front-running player as well,” Gill said. “Sometimes those things are not on the stat sheet, but the team appreciates that and benefits from it.”
After his junior season, Korzeniowski was selected in the 2024 Major League Soccer SuperDraft by the Philadelphia Union, who still hold his rights, giving the striker an opportunity to begin his pro career for the Union in the 2025 season. Burney, too, has MLS in his future, signing a homegrown deal in December with the Seattle Sounders, with whom he was a youth academy player before coming to Penn. “I’m really excited for what the next story is for them,” Gill said.
The Penn head coach is excited about what’s next for the program, too. While the 2024 season was historic—Gill noted that the three straight Ivy titles, the three wins over ranked opponents, and the No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament “haven’t been done here at Penn”—he now has his sights on a deeper run. The knowledge that Penn’s NCAA tourney loss in 2022 came to the eventual national champion, and their 2024 loss to a UMass team that won three games en route to the national quarterfinals, fuels that belief.
“Soccer is a frustrating sport,” Gill said. “Sometimes you can play well and lose.” He called the NCAA an “unforgiving tournament.” The Ivy League Tournament, too, proved unforgiving; Penn lost to Princeton, at home, in the title game, after a dramatic overtime victory over Brown in the semifinals.
But if the Quakers can establish themselves as a perennial power, and chase down the “Blue Bloods of college soccer,” they’ll have more opportunities to keep winning the Ivies and then break through on the sport’s biggest stage. “We feel pretty strongly,” Gill said, “that we have the ability to take that next step.” —DZ