Men's Soccer Team Kicked Off the '80s with Playoffs Bid

On Nov. 12, 1980, the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) granted a bid for the NYIT men's soccer team to compete for the first time in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) playoffs. Though the Bears lost in the playoffs, they would only get stronger as the decade progressed. By 1985, the team advanced to the NCAA Division II Final Four Tournament. Clitos Papadopoulos (B.S. '85, M.S. '89), who played on the team in the early '80s, still holds the Bears' record as all-time leading scorer and was inducted into the NYIT Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005.

Today, the men's soccer team continues to thrive. As reported in the Winter 2015 issue of NYIT Magazine, the team advanced to its seventh NCAA Tournament in 2014 and earned the No. 4 seed after winning the same year's East Coast Conference championship with a 1-0 victory over neighboring-rival LIU Post. NYIT compiled a 14-3-1 overall record and earned a share of the regular-season title with an 8-1-1 mark. Five Bears were named All-ECC with junior Gonzalo Barroso picking up Defensive Player of the Year honors and head coach Carlos Delcid (B.S. ’97) named Coach of the Year.

Every Thursday, Social Media Strategist Brylee Kaye shares a retro photo for #TBT (aka Throwback Thursday), a popular hashtag campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This content is featured as part of The Box's "60 Years in 60 Days" series in celebration of NYIT's 60th anniversary in 2015.