Penn State men's soccer coach Barry Gorman has asked fifth-year senior Ryan Badaracco to change roles this season, marking the second year in a row Badaracco has had to take a new approach to the game.

He's only too happy to do it this time around because he hated the role he had to play last season.

Badaracco, a 2004 Pine-Richland High School graduate, missed the 2007 season due to a knee injury suffered in a club team game during that summer. He sustained a torn anterior cruciate ligament and had surgery in July. The injury and subsequent rehab shelved him for the entire season, which would have been a senior season he could have shared with others in his class.

"It was really tough because I hurt it playing in the summer with my club team," Badaraco said. "It wasn't even in a Penn State game. What made it really tough was that I had to sit out last year and not play with all the guys I had been playing with here for three years.

"It was tough to watch them play and know there wasn't anything I could do to help."

Badaracco is back this season and doing all he can to help. Gorman recently asked him to switch positions, moving from his normal spot at center-midfield to center-back, essentially taking him from a more offensive spot to one requiring more defensive and playmaking responsibilities.

The move was made after Penn State lost its starting center-back, sophomore Andres Casais, who incurred a broken jaw in a match early this season.

Gorman believes Badaracco's experience and versatility as a player as well as his overall knowledge of the game make him the right guy to fill the vacancy.

"It is a real plus to have Ryan back," Gorman said. "His work ethic is truly unbelievable.

"He's a great individual, Ryan is the kind of player you don't realize how important he is until you don't have him."

Badaracco is looking forward to the challenge. He says his versatility was one of the things that attracted Penn State coaches to him when he was a Pine-Richland senior. He was an All-WPIAL performer in both 2002 and 2003 and was the team's most valuable player as a senior.

"It shouldn't really be that big an adjustment," Badaracco said as he prepared to play his first game in his new position in what turned out to be a 3-0 defeat Sept. 24 at Penn. "I never really played it much, but I know if takes an ability to kind of read the game and make adjustments. You're not as much on the attack as you are setting up plays for other guys and playing a defensive role. I think I can do pretty well at it."

Badaracco played 20 games as a freshman at Penn State and started all 20 in his sophomore season. He said his strengths as a player include his ability to address the technical aspects of offense and defense, to read the game and to make plays to put others in position to score. While he does not feel he is yet 100 percent recovered from his injury, he believes playing center-mid might prove a little less taxing.

"I'd say I'm still a little less than 100 percent," he said. "But I'm feeling a lot better and a lot stronger now. It seems like it's getting better with every game. I think moving back will help, too. There will be a little less running and that will take some of the strain off my knee."

Penn State took a 2-6-2 record (0-1 in the Big Ten) into a conference match yesterday at Northwestern and returns home to face Ohio State Saturday.

"I think we have played pretty well, but we're not getting any results," said Badaracco, a team captain.

"We're just not putting the ball in the back of the net. We're getting a lot of chances; we're getting something like 20 shots a game, but we're not finishing."

Penn State has scored eight goals in its first 10 games and Badaracco notched one of those. The team scored its eight goals on 182 shots.

In contrast, through 10 games, Nittany Lions opponents had tallied 15 goals on 89 shots.

Badaracco already has graduated with a degree in finance and accepted a position with an investment banking firm in New York, which he will begin when the soccer season ends. An All-Big 10 Academic selection as a sophomore and a member of ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-District first team that year, his future beyond soccer seems set.

That does not mean he has any plans to give up the game.

"I definitely want to stay involved," he said. "Probably not playing. I haven't really thought about that.

"I was thinking more in term of coaching. I want to try to give something back to the game if I can."