College of Charleston takes on top-ranked Maryland

MOUNT PLEASANT — Ralphie Lundy did something over the summer he hadn’t done in years — work at his father’s soccer camp.

Lundy, a senior midfielder for the College of Charleston men’s soccer team, was supposed to spend the summer in Denver playing for the Real Colorado Foxes, a team in the USL’s developmental league. But an ankle injury sent him back to the Lowcountry for six weeks.

Since sitting around the house wasn’t an option, Ralphie joined his father — longtime College of Charleston men’s soccer coach Ralph Lundy — at his soccer camp.

It was during one of those unbearably hot July afternoons that the younger Lundy was watching his father work with a couple of players when he realized that the old man might have been right about a lot of things.

“I hadn’t worked a camp with my father in probably six years,” Lundy said. “I started to watch him with these kids, training them and working with them and it kind of hit me that all the things he’d been telling me over the years, about soccer, about life, were all true and I probably needed to start listening to him more.”

Lundy and the Cougars will take on Maryland, the nation’s No. 1 team, at 7 tonight at Patriots Point.

There have been times over the last four years when Ralphie wondered if he had made the right decision to play for his father at the College of Charleston. Father and son, both strong-willed and a little stubborn, had butted heads over the years.

“We’ve certainly had our differences, especially during my freshman and sophomore seasons,” Lundy said.

Even the coach admits there were situations with his son that maybe he could have handled differently.

“I probably was a little harder on him than with some of the other players,” Ralph Lundy said. “There are things I probably could have done differently, but he’s my son and I want the very best for him.”

Halfway through his senior season, Lundy said those issues are a distant memory and he wouldn’t trade the experience of playing for his father.

“He’s turned me into the man and the player I am today,” he said. “It’s been a journey, but one I wouldn’t trade. My relationship with my father is better than it ever has been. It’s been a great four years, and I’m trying to savor each day I have left.”

The Lundys hope to have another memory to savor when the Cougars take on the unbeaten Terrapins.

“This is the kind of match every player wants to play in,” said Lundy, who leads the Cougars with two goals and 23 shots this season.

“To be the best, you have to beat the best, and Maryland has been one of the best programs in the country a long time. You want to compare yourself and compete against the best teams. This is a huge match for us and the program.”