August 27, 2011

Dear Alums & Friends,

It’s pouring rain here and we’re all getting prepared for Hurricane Irene to hit New England. But before the storm the 2011 season opened with a trip to Durham, NH to face the UNH Wildcats of the America East Conference. The whole team has been waiting for this day since we arrived in pre-season camp on August 10th.

There was certainly a buzz in the locker room and it carried onto the field in the first half. They grow them big in the Granite State but UNH’s size didn’t intimidate or stop our guy’s from competing. We battled through some physical play with neither team having many quality chances. The shots were even at five a piece, so the 0-0 score at the interval was a fair result.

In the second half we made some adjustments keeping the ball down on the ground and away from some of their sequoias. This allowed us to generate not only some possession but, some great attacks with multiple options. Unfortunately, against the run of play and on a counter attack the Wildcats got the first goal of the game on a shot that snaked its’ way past senior goalkeeper Peyton Warwick (Prairie Village, KS). A second yellow and subsequent ejection to junior midfielder Matt Ribbens (Tinley Park, IL) looked as though it would spell doom for our Rams but the squad took an aggressive approach to being a man down, building play and again creating scoring chances including a Matt Sykes (Sheffield, England) blast that the Wildcat keeper had to parry away. The pressure paid off in the 84th minute when Franco LoPresti (Whitby, Ontario) headed in a Sykes free kick for the equalizer.

As I have said before the game of soccer can be a cruel and exciting one as our hosts, to the delight of their fans, scored an unassisted goal in the 89th minute to sneak away with the 2-1 victory. Not the way we wanted to begin the season but there are some very good things have come out of the game that will serve us well down the road.

Today we had a recovery workout in the pool and some much needed rest. This afternoon and tomorrow will be the first full day off since we came into camp in early August. As was reported on the gorhody.com website, our game versus the University of Vermont has been postponed due to the Hurricane (now down graded to a category 1 tropical storm) and its’ path through New England. The match will now be played on Tuesday August 29th at 3:00 pm here at the URI Soccer Complex. It’s the home opener and a great chance for our guy’s to get the first win of the season if we play our cards right.

All the best for those on the east coast and GO RAMS!
Coach O’C