The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Men's Soccer: Carl Woszczynski Blog
9/23/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
Sept. 23, 2009
Hey Blazer Fans,
This past weekend was a great weekend for us! After another rain soaked week of practice, we were prepared to head to Memphis for their annual tournament. And, go figure, the weekend forecast in Memphis called for rain. Luckily, we were used to playing and practicing in the rain over the last few weeks so the rainy games would be nothing new for us.
We departed Bartow Thursday at noon and made the four hour drive to Memphis. Once we got there, we had a light training session to make sure everyone's legs were loose after the drive. That night we got dinner at a nice Italian restaurant to make sure we got the proper food in us for the game the next day. Everyone's goal going into the weekend was to leave with two wins and the tournament trophy, and we were prepared to make that happen.
On Friday we had a 3 o'clock game against Central Arkansas, who has had a pretty good year so far. Freshman Kofi Gyawu was able to score a great header goal on a corner kick from Bart Markel in the first half to start the scoring off. Unfortunately, we gave up a goal in the last minute of the first half to go into halftime tied at ones. In the second half, Kofi was able to put away another goal on a breakaway to give us the 2-1 win! The first game went the way we wanted, but we still had to take care of business on Sunday.
After a pretty uneventful day of relaxation on Saturday, Sunday came around....with more rain. Once we got warmed up in a slow drizzle, a thunderstorm came so we all had to go into the locker room to get away from the lighting. It poured, and after about 30 or 45 minutes of delay, we were able to take the field for the game. We played an AMAZING first half of soccer and were unlucky to go into halftime tied 0-0 when it could've easily been up 3 or 4 nil. The second half was a bit more back and forth, with both teams getting good chances. With around five minutes left, Two-Boys Gumede played a great free kick into the path of Babayele Sodade, who was able to deflect the ball past the keeper and claim his 4th goal of the year! The defense held strong, and we were able to win the game 1-0.
We were the only team in the tournament to win two games, so we were named Tournament Champions! We were also able to place four players on the All-Tournament Team which is a great achievement. The next day, due to his great play in the tournament, Two-Boys Gumede was named Conference USA Offensive Player of the Week! It was a great weekend for us. This weekend, we'll travel to Dallas, Texas to play in SMU's tournament against them and Houston Baptist. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up two more wins to start the season 7-2 and start out Conference USA 1-0! GO BLAZERS!
---Carl
