Its back to the routine we have been craving for the last 9
months. Every time we had to wake up at 7am and listen to Coach Mike tell us to
squat deeper, every time we had go run a 3 mile over the summer, every
preseason two-a-day has been in preparation for this day. You know game day is
close upon us when we play the legendary 1 touch game the night before. 4 hours before kick-off the entire team
shows up looking real dapper as everybody is dressed in their finest for pre
game meal at the Ratty. After everyone has started sweating profusely and ate
the basic chicken and rice we all head up to the locker room to go through
our own pre game rituals. In the locker room the team is extremely excited to
play. After our last game being a 5-0 win we are excited to show the hopefully
large crowd and everyone else how great we are. As we go out to start the warmup we have already drawn a
crowd of 200 fans, an hour before kick-off, which just gets everyone even more
excited. We are back at it again and we couldn’t be more excited. The walk out,
the lights, the introductions, the fans, the excitement, it’s all back. We come out the first half and just
dominate the game, we have all cylinders firing 100% and we feel great. In the
halftime locker room we all know a goal is going to come soon because we are
right on the edge. Unfortunately we were right about a goal coming soon but it
was for Siena. Right after their great goal from the edge of the box they proceeded to bury a pk to make it 2-0. I’m proud to say as a team we didn’t give
up and battled to score in the upcoming minutes. We proceeded to continue the
attack with countless shots on net.
All of our 20 shots seemed to go over the crossbar or be stopped my a
miraculous save by the keeper. Siena defended like their life depended on it
and by the grace of God they left after 20 minutes with the 2-1 victory. Losing
a game is one of the worst feelings in the world but your home opener, in front
of 1400 students, to a team you were better than, in your senior year just
makes it a little bit worse. What makes it better though is the fact we outshot
them 20-8, we had 5 freshmen start or get significant minutes, and the team
battled back to almost come back from a 2-0 deficit. We looked good other than
4 minutes of the game so we had a positive outlook going forward.
With
nonstop recovery for the next 48 hours we were ready to leave for BU and play a
team that was nationally ranked and would be an even bigger challenge for us.
The journey didn’t start off well with our bus driver getting stuck in a
one-way street for one hour in Boston where he managed to possibly dent a car
parked on the side of the road. We ended up needing the help of the Boston Police
to get us out of the situation. Even with the minor hitch in our travel we were
able to show up late to BU but we came out ready to play the second the whistle
blew. We had something to prove after that last loss and we battled for 85
minutes in one of the most physical games I have been a part of. After those
85 minutes Tariq Akeel managed to put a beautiful header into the upper 90’s
off a free kick curled in by Jack Gorab. We managed to close out the game and
get the much needed win. I’m very proud of the boys because this year we didn’t
allow for one loss to affect us and we wouldn’t allow ourselves to have
consecutive losses. We played two great games this weekend but were unlucky to
have only managed one win. We have learned a lot from the loss though and it is
certainly driving us to get 2 more crucial wins this weekend against Providence
and Lehigh. Looking forward to checking back in with some positive results from
this upcoming weekend
-Big Ben
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