October 2, 2011

Dear Alumni & Friends,

It’s a beautiful day here in Rhode Island today and the first real day off for us all in a while. Yesterday we hosted an international friendly with the Winstars Soccer Academy from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is the same club that co-captain Franco LoPresti (Markham, Ontario) played for in high school as did former Ram and All-American Jeff Gonsalves. I’ve actually known their coach Bobby Graham since my days at Dartmouth College where one his players Danny Sankar (who now does SAT prep classes for the WSA) was a standout for the Big Green. Initially this was going to be a completely open weekend as we couldn’t find a team to fill in these date after the NCAA voted in April to extend the soccer season by a week. Luckily the Winstars agreed to come down to give us a game (and UMass today) in preparation for the beginning of the Atlantic 10 season next weekend.

Yesterday was bit different then today as it rained off and on the whole morning. We kicked off at 11 am and were set to play three 30 minute periods. The squad was a bit depleted with some injuries, sickness as well as keeping some guy’s out who needed some time off to heal some nicks they had.

We started off slow as a team and at the end of the first 30 it was 1-0 Rams with a Jamie Eckmayer (Harrington Park, NJ) goal on a Mark Lubetkin (Livingston, NJ) assist. The squad re-grouped at the interval and from their it was all Rhody with the final score being 8-0. The scoring was led by freshmen Michael Casey’s (Wakefield, RI) 3 goals and 1 assist performance followed by 2 goals and 1 assist from Ross Morison (Linlithgow, Scotland), 2 goals from Eckmayer and a single tally from Joe Haught (Brecksville, OH). Lubetkin picked up 3 assists on the day and sophomore defender Parker Kuklinski (Portsmouth, RI) an assist himself. In the goal Adam Blanchard (Scarborough, ME) and Thomas Spenser (Hastings on Hudson, NY) split the game and earned the shared shutout. One of the highlights of the day was seeing Ryan Apt (Doylestown, PA) return to playing after his PCL surgery last February and picking up an assist too. Here is the line up with substitutions:

URI RAMS STARTING LINE-UP: Blanchard (Spenser), LoPresti, Hernandez, Austin (Kuklinski), Lubetkin, Casey (Austin), Markman (Moran), Moran (Apt), Haught (Lubetkin), Morison (Casey), Eckmayer.

Tomorrow we get back at it in preparation for the opening doubleheader weekend of the 2011 A10 season when we host Saint Louis on Friday night at 7:00 pm and Charlotte on Sunday at 1:00 pm. On Friday, the game is being shown via tape delay on Cox Sports Television. As always both matches with be highly competitive and important results to start the conference season. Hope to see you all there...

GO RAMS!
Coach O’C