COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - The last time the Saint John's University soccer team hosted an NCAA Division III playoff game, John Moynihan was there – scoring his team's lone goal in a 2-1 overtime loss to defending national champion UC-San Diego on Nov. 12, 1989.
 
Moynihan will be back on campus when the Johnnies host again this weekend. This time, though, he'll be part of the opposition.
 
The 1991 SJU graduate is now in his fourth season as an assistant coach at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, the team the Johnnies face in the first round of this year's Division III national tournament at 11 a.m. Saturday at Haws Field.
 
The Raiders enter play 13-4-4 overall, while SJU finished the regular season 17-2-3.
 
"I told (SJU head coach) Tudor (Flintham), this will be the only time in my life when I'm not cheering for the Johnnies," Moynihan said. "A bunch of my old teammates from back then are coming up. Of course, they'll be cheering for the Johnnies and not for me.
 
"But I'm excited for both teams. I'm excited for the season Saint John's has had and I'm glad our team is doing well too. We'll see how it goes. It should be a good game."
 
Moynihan certainly knows his soccer. In addition to his coaching duties at MSOE, he is the owner and president of Keeper Goals, a company founded by his father Jim and mother Laura. 
 
Since taking over after his father's retirement, he's transformed the business into a company whose product line includes not just goals and nets for almost every sport, but athletic facility and site furnishing equipment for stadiums, parks and indoor sports complexes.
 
"My dad started by cutting metal in his garage for a bunch of local steel companies," Moynihan recalled. "One day, someone asked if he could make a basketball pole that wouldn't break. So he did. Then someone asked if he could make a soccer goal. He did that too.
 
"Soccer was growing so much at the time that he just kept making goals and the business grew from there."
 
In the meantime, his family got deeper and deeper into the game. His mother, who passed away from cancer in 1992, became a pioneer in the sport – starting a girls league in Milwaukee and eventually going on to become the head women's coach at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where the soccer field is now named in her honor. 
 
Her oldest daughter Sue played at the University of Wisconsin and succeeded her mother as head coach at Wisconsin-Milwaukee (where younger sister Maureen also played) before going on to be a longtime assistant at Purdue.
 
She is now the marketing director at Keeper Goals, but her husband Rich (the longtime head women's coach at Utah) is now an assistant coach at Northwestern, where Moynihan's brother Mike is in his 15th season as the head women's coach.
 
"It's funny because my mom and dad didn't play soccer," Moynihan said. "They didn't know anything about the sport to start with. But our neighbor's son signed up for a team and his mom told my mom it was a really great way to burn energy because they were always running around. So she signed all of us up and my dad eventually became our head coach. That's how it all began."
 
Moynihan, meanwhile, found his way to Collegeville as part of a group of Milwaukee kids who came to SJU to play for then-head coach Pat Haws '72. 
 
That included the Schulte brothers (Steve and Joe) and forward George Fehrenbach, all of whom were also key parts of the 1989 team, which finished 10-3-3 overall.
 
The Johnnies started the postseason that year with a thrilling 1-0 victory at Colorado College in the first round of NCAA play, a game won on a goal by Fehrenbach in the 10th round of penalty kicks.
 
The victory set up a second-round matchup with UC-San Diego on a blustery and overcast November Sunday afternoon in Collegeville. Moynihan got his team on the board first after freshman teammate Brian Dielman fired a shot wide left. He was there to get the ball and slipped it past Triton goalkeeper Brian Siljander at the 3:30 mark of the first half.
 
"I remember I got lucky on that one," recalled Moynihan, who earned All-MIAC honorable mention distinction that season. "George crossed it and another guy kind of misdirected it. It came right to me and I was able to get it in the net."
 
The defending champs, though, tied the score at the 14:00 mark. And that was where things remained until sophomore forward Chris Hanssen scored three minutes into the second overtime to lift the Tritons – who now play at the Division I level – to victory.
 
"We should have won it," Fehrenbach told the St. Cloud Times afterward. "This was the best game we played all year."
 
Despite the loss, though, it was an impressive season for the Johnnies, who allowed only two goals in 10 MIAC games, both on dead-ball kicks. Leading the way was senior defender Mike Oelrich, that season's conference player of the year.
 
"Death by defense," Moynihan said. "That's what Pat told us before every game. That was kind of the motto we lived by."
 
"Oelrich was the MIAC player of the year and (All-MIAC goalkeeper) Gary Bischel was really great in net," Haws added. "(Fellow All-MIAC pick) Kurt Roemer was a transfer from Notre Dame. There was a lot of talent in that group."
 
Including Moynihan.
 
"He was a great player," Haws said. "He had really impressive physical abilities. He could play from both the left and right side. But his biggest strength was a really strong understanding of the game."
 
An understanding that's served him well, both in his business and in coaching. He helped his sister with the Wisconsin-Milwaukee women's program in 1992-93, then served as the JV coach at Marquette High from 1994-99. 
 
After that, he focused on growing his business until inadvertently talking himself into his current position at MSOE several years ago.
 
"John and I have known each other since he was six," Raiders coach Rob Harrington said. "Because he played at the Division III level and still loves the sport, he'd come to our games. Afterward, he'd tell me everything we were doing wrong. Finally, I told him I was putting him on the coaching staff. He didn't really have a choice in the matter.
 
"Honestly, John is a soccer savant," he added. "He has an incredibly astute soccer mind."
 
"Rob had been asking me to coach, then his family was going through some health issues," Moynihan added. "My wife said I should help him out. So I took the job. Now he won't let me quit.
 
"But we have a really good group of guys here. They care about each other and they play really well together. It's a lot of fun being around them."
 
The Raiders just wrapped up their third-straight Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference tournament title this past Saturday. Now they head to Collegeville for a matchup against Moynihan's alma mater, which is back in NCAA play for the first time since 2005.
 
"I do a lot of work in Minnesota, and whenever I'm back that way, I try to make a point of coming to campus," said Moynihan, who will be inducted into the Wisconsin Soccer Hall of Fame next year. "I still keep in touch with a lot of the guys I played with. My fantasy football league is six guys I played soccer with, another Johnnie and two non-Johnnies. 
 
"So Saint John's is still a special place to me."

5 years ago (2021)
Tight end Alex Larson hauled in a 3-yard touchdown pass from Chris Backes on fourth-and-goal with one second left on the clock and the SJU football team rallied to beat Bethel 29-28 in the first MIAC championship game on Nov. 13 in Arden Hills.

"This is the best game I've ever been a part of," Larson said afterward. "We never gave up. We were down the whole game and we ended up getting the win. So that's … I'm just at a loss for words."