Many of us can relate to the saying, “Nothing in this life is free, you have to earn everything”. The UVU men’s soccer club has learned that lesson fully in the early weeks of the season and the feeling around the team is that they want to apply it in practice.
This season has already seen some good times, bad times and not-so-bad moments, leaving the team with a 1-1-1 record in the third week of the season.
To start the season, the defeated the University of Utah 2-1. The next game, they tied Salt Lake Community College 2-2 and then came a crushing loss to Westminster College 3-0. The team knows that the loss is squarely on their shoulders and credit their preparation as their reason for defeat.
“We didn’t prepare ourselves in practice for the game,” said Jordan Timothy. “We didn’t practice hard or tough, we just didn’t push each other and you should practice how you play.”
Goalkeeper Brackston Morgan also commented on his team’s performance in the game.
“We came out expecting to kill them, and we were just too complacent during the whole game,” Morgan said. “We conformed to their style of play, not ours.”
The team also confided that lack of chemistry was a big part of them not playing well. But they still seemed pretty confident in themselves and believe that they can prepare better to get back to winning.
“We just need to get back into sink as a team,” Timothy said. “As soon as that game was over, we started preparing ourselves for the next game.”
That preparing will be done in practice.
“We are going to practice hard and really push each other,” Morgan said.
To say that practice will be more intense and chemistry will be up may be easier said than done. But it is a lot easier to accomplish after such a humbling loss and realize how one should have prepared to win, and the feel around practice is exactly that.
The club does need to prepare for a tough, competitive home match against SLCC on Oct. 6. The games against SLCC have been tough and physical and the Wolverines feel that they always play well when they play SLCC.
