Sophomore Zack Wolfenzon (photo courtesy of David
Silverman)
Day 1 Blog
New Mexico Trip
Day 2: Friday
Game day. Even though kickoff against UC
Santa Barbara wasn't until 4:30 p.m. at the University of New
Mexico, our whole day was devoted to this game. Typical hotel
breakfast with scrambled eggs, hash browns and cereal started us
off as we got our day going at 8:00 .m. After breakfast we had a
team meeting to watch some video and go over the scouting report on
Santa Barbara.
We headed out to the field to move around a
little bit, kick the ball around and just get a feel for the field
we would be playing on. After a long Thursday, we were all excited
to get to the game. We walked around the stadium for about an hour,
got a light jog in and then hopped back in the vans to head for
some lunch.
We showed up at an Italian restaurant all
ready to eat, only to be notified that one of our coaches (we
won't name names) accidentally made the reservation
for Saturday afternoon. Luckily the restaurant manager was
accommodating (a.k.a. he wasn't too busy this Friday
afternoon) and was happy to seat all 23 of us. A couple of Chicken
Parms and Fettucini Alfredos later, it was back to the hotel and
time for the game.
Meeting in the lobby pre-game we were all
ready to go. Today was also captain Jaren LaGreca's birthday
so we were all hoping to get him a good birthday present this
afternoon. We arrived at the stadium a little over an hour before
gametime and it was straight business from there. It was a
scorcher, 95 degrees at kickoff and the altitude definitely had a
negative effect on some. We had our pregame talks, Coach Junot gave
us the lineup and we were ready to go.
Talking about a loss is never fun, so I'll just leave it
at that. Both goals came in the last minutes of each half which was
somewhat demoralizing, but we ended up losing 2-0. The game was a
story of two different halves with UC Santa Barbara having most
possession and more shots in the first half and we had the better
of them the second half. The only different was we couldn't
put one away while they sealed the game when we were forced to
chase. It was a tough one to swallow, our first loss of this new
season, but we are all set on bouncing back Sunday against UNM.
There is no way we're leaving this tournament without a win.
Tomorrow we'll go wander about Coach Mike Grayczyk's
hometown of Albuquerque and get a light training session in
preparation for Sunday's game against the Lobos. Goodnight
for now and hopefully we will have some
