ENTRY #1
Monday, Aug. 30, 2010
Some of you may have seen some other UP teams starting blogs, but now the Men’s soccer team is in the game and I am here to give you the skinny on everything that will be going on with us this year. My former teammate Greg Rouse did an excellent job describing the emotions and pageantry around the World Cup, so I have a big task in trying to keep you readers similarly excited about UP Soccer. Firstly an introduction is necessary, my name is Alex Kraus and I am a super senior this year. To some of you fans it may seem like I’ve been around forever, but I guess I just can’t get enough of college so I decided to stick around for one more year. To most of my teammates I am the grandpa of the team, but I prefer to be known as the savvy, wise veteran, I think that has a nicer ring to it. The good thing is that I have been through a lot during my time here at UP so hopefully my experience can shine through these blogs and make for some interesting reads. I would also like to issue an apology right off the mark because I am new to this blogging scene and I am not a journalism major, so while I’ll try to enlighten the best I can, the first couple entries may be a bit rough. You’ll learn more about me and the team in future blogs so keep posted, but I’ll attempt to keep the rest of this one to what we did last year and a season prospectus.
There is a tremendous buzz around the UP men’s team this year. For those of you not in the know, we finished last year 12-6-5, with a 4-4-4 record in conference, good enough for fourth place. We made the NCAA tournament as an at-large bid, going on the road and collecting wins at New Mexico and North Carolina State before finally succumbing to a 1-0 heartbreaking defeat at the hands of eventual National Champion Virginia in the Sweet 16. Last year we were road warriors, collecting a lot of victories in the friendly confines of other schools, but this year we hope to bring more excitement and more WINS to you guys at Merlo. We are starting the season off ranked #19 in the country, so we are starting the season off with a bit of a target on our back. After beginning last season so well, we also jumped into the rankings, but then couldn’t string together enough good performances to keep us up there, so this year our aim is to warrant a ranking throughout the whole season.
Today (Monday, the 30th) is the first day of school, so while it’s tough to get excited about going back to class, it means that our preseason, and more importantly double days, is officially over. The team has exerted an incredible amount of work this summer preparing for the upcoming season. Through all the running, lifting, and practicing we feel like our fitness is as good as any team in the country. Once practice got rolling, we had a couple days of battle boxes, UP’s versions of defensive drills, involving lots of one on one and two on two challenges. Then we were able to move on to some possession drills to get ready for our opening exhibition game. Last Wednesday we beat Oregon State 3-1 on the first ever UP goals from Connor Barbaree and Stevie Evans, as well as a tally from Ryan Luke. Overall the team thought we played pretty well, it was good for some of the new freshmen to get it and display some of their abilities, and allowed us to iron out some of the kinks before our opener this Friday night at 7 PM at Merlo field versus Northern Illinois. We hope to see everyone out there and we promise that you will be treated to some attractive, attacking soccer!!!
Wow this is getting rather long, so for your eyes sake I am going to cut myself off. Stay tuned for more, I plan on keeping you all updated with everything about our team and these blogs will become more creative and interesting to read (or at least I hope) as the season wears on.
Sincerely,
Alex Kraus #17
P.S. For any of you looking for something to do Thursday night, our own UP alumni Logan Emory will be playing for the Puerto Rico Islanders against our Portland Timbers at PGE Park at 7 PM. Check it out!
CLICK HERE to send Alex your questions, comments and feedback.
