The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Men's Soccer: Carl Woszczynski Blog
9/16/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
Sept. 16, 2009
Hey Blazer Fans,
Sorry I'm a few days late with this blog, but it's been a busy start of the week in the classroom. Last week was a relatively successful week on the field. We started off with a Labor Day match against Centenary, and were able to play our way to a 2-0 win. Even though we had nice weather on Monday, it would soon take a turn for the worse.
With our UAB Soccer For A Cure Classic coming up on the weekend, we wanted to get a few good days of training in, but the weather wasn't going to permit this to happen. Tuesday's practice got stormed out, so we headed to Wallace Gym to get a little extra fitness work in to at least get something out of the day. Wednesday bought rain and shine. When we headed up to the field for practice it was sunny, but that didn't last for more than ten minutes. As the rain started to pour down, we continued to train. It was an entertaining practice to say the least, and with half the field covered in puddles, no one knew who would be next to slip and fall. Thursday we were able to get some sun for practice, but most of the field was still soaked, so we were limited to working on restarts and set pieces to prepare for Drake on Friday.
When Friday came around, we were all very excited to play, but the bad weather kept coming. We knew the field conditions would be terrible, especially since we were the second game of the night. Unfortunately, after a long sloppy match that could hardly be called a soccer game, we gave up the game-losing goal with hardly any time left on the clock to end the game 2-1. Michal Mravec was able to get our only goal in front of a few members of his family who were visiting from his home country of Slovakia. We didn't have long to be down though, as we had to rebound back for our game on Sunday against UMKC. Sunday went a bit better for us, as we were able to play our way to a good 2-0 lead, with goals from Two-Boys Gumede and Anthony King. But again we gave up a late goal, this time with less than a minute on the clock, en route to a 2-1 final. Every team in the tournament ended up 1-1. If we kept the UMKC game at 2-0, we would've taken the trophy on goal differential, but giving up that late goal dropped us all the way to third in the standings. Fortunately, we were still able to get two players on the All-Tournament Team.
This upcoming weekend, we will be traveling to Memphis to play in their tournament against Central Arkansas on Friday and 2008 NCAA Participant Vermont on Sunday. These are two big games, and it would be great to come home with two wins and the Memphis Tournament trophy!
Until next time,
Carl
