EKU Friends of Soccer Player Diary 2

Dear Fans (:

A couple of us freshman have been asked to describe this past weekends’ games: Louisville and Xavier. The one word that we all decided to use for our first games was inspirational.

[in-spuh-rey-shuhn]

–noun

Definition:

An inspiring or animating action or influence something inspired, as an idea, a result of inspired activity, a thing or person that inspires, a divine influence directly and immediately exerted upon the mind or soul, the act of inspiring; quality or state of being inspired.

Based on these definitions all of our emotions came alive and we now know that that “excitement” and those “butterflies” were a result of being inspired. Over the past few weeks we have pushed our bodies, minds, and spirituality to levels that we have felt uncomfortable. We didn’t quite know why we were doing this to ourselves besides, well, we love this game! But on our way to Louisville we first had team meal, then we had about a 2 hour car ride to further bond. We all saw the way that upper classmen were coping with nerves and excitement and we figured out our own way to do the same. Remaining cool, calm and collected was the key. Yeah, we’re about to play one of the hardest games we’ve ever played in our lives but we have trained so hard for so long that this is the next logical step forward. Our program is about dedication, discipline, hard work and lastly, results. The game against Louisville wasn’t our best result but I can tell you 100% that we are a better team than we were that first minute of the game on Friday night. We had a great experience! Playing in a Big East stadium with a huge crowd and having to use all our tricks in our bag. It was a good experience and I hope everyone envies the experience we had. After the loss, we knew we had major work to do before facing Xavier on Sunday. We had practice on Saturday and we focused on skills that we HAD to change in order to have success against Xavier and to get that result that we deserve. We DESERVE to win and we knew we’d find a way to work harder and find a way to compete more consistently. We had a good training session on Saturday and we all regrouped to get our heads in the game for Sunday! Emotions flew again on Sunday because for more than half of the team this was our first home game we have ever played on our own field. I know we wanted to win our home opener! In the locker room we could already feel a different attitude. We promised ourselves that we weren’t going to let ourselves play scared. We were facing another big school, but we weren’t going to underplay our talent anymore. We came out at Xavier in the first 5 minutes stronger than we had against Louisville and the tone for the game was set. We were in control.

Xavier was a completely different team than Louisville. They used brute strength in order to “bully” us out of the middle of the field. Sunday, we fought back. We used the strength that we had gathered throughout preseason and our hard work paid off. We learned how to use our outside backs and to get them higher into the attack. This allowed our central midfielders to have more opportunities on goal. Our goal came from a lot of movement out wide and finally a cross into the center for a center midfielder to finish. We learned how to use that space better and we finally received the result. We beat Xavier 1-0 and this is just the beginning to our success as a team.