Peter Sanger, a senior on the 2010 Milwaukee men's soccer team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website. Today is his eighth blog entry.
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Upon arriving back from Cleveland State, a sweet reward was waiting for us; a newly finished Engelmann Field. That meant we could spend our entire week practicing on campus for the first time since I’ve been at UWM. It was a great way to start preparing for one of the biggest games of the season against Green Bay.
Throughout the week we got a good chance to get a feel for the new turf field and it really is the best artificial surface I’ve ever played on. I was never a big fan of turf and was really disappointed when I first found out that Engelmann would be undergoing the switch, but I’m slowly warming up to it now.
I think a big part of that has to do with the fact that UWM went out and found the best possible surface for us to get, leaving us with a FIFA approved field, the only one of it’s kind in all of North America. Not only will this provide us with a more convenient practice location, but it will also allow us to increase the amount of playing on our home field, allow for less maintenance costs, allow us to schedule classes closer to training times, increase campus awareness of the team and even allow us to use it as a recruiting tool when showing it to potential incoming recruits. All in all, the field looks great, plays great and is definitely a positive addition to UWM Soccer.
However, that wasn’t the only exciting new development for the soccer program this week. We underwent some human performance tests this week measuring our heart rate, oxygen consumption, lactate levels, etc., and will begin to start wearing heart rate monitors during training this fall. Why is this exciting or important you might ask? Well, now during practice our coaches can have an idea of how hard they’re pushing us and whether we need to scale our practices down, increase the intensity, or continue as we are. The human body is an amazing thing and to be able to have the opportunity to use such advanced equipment will definitely only benefit our team.
Going into Saturday’s game we spent a lot of time at practice focusing on keeping our tempo high on offense and moving the ball a lot all around the field when in possession. Against Cleveland State we had a lot of success when we limited our touches and worked the ball around, ultimately tiring them out, allowing us to score the game winner in overtime. Furthermore, we knew Green Bay was a quality side, possessing a true match-winner in the form of All-American JC Banks.
We went into the game knowing that if we played our game well, we could get a positive result, so we were really confident going into our first home game Saturday night. Saturday was a beautiful day and come 7 p.m., there was a huge crowd, clear skies and an overall electric atmosphere.
We started the game with a lot of desire, but spent the majority of the first half playing far too direct and found ourselves heading into the locker room down 1-0 off of a goal from JC following a corner. We didn’t stay with our marks and really only had ourselves to blame. We weren’t ready to throw in the towel however, and after a productive half-time talk, we came out playing our soccer in the second half.
Much more passing and movement on the ball resulted in a much-deserved equalizer not too long into the half. I was able to cut inside of my defender on the left side, slide in a cross to Andrew Wiedabach, who flicked it on for Cody Banks to stab home from the six-yard box. It was a great goal and we really started to feel the momentum turn for us. Unfortunately, late in the second half, we were reduced to ten men. Freshman defender James Ashcroft was ruled to have taken down JC Banks as the last defender and shown a red card for his offense. It looked to me like minimal contact, but JC went down leaving the ref with a game-changing decision to make.
Much to our dismay, he went straight into his pocket for the red and we found ourselves at a numerical disadvantage. We made it to overtime at 1-1 and decided we weren’t going to let the numbers game hold us back and vowed to continue attacking when possible, because we knew only a win would get us the Chancellor's Cup back. We created the most dangerous of the chances in overtime, but a mistake in the back allowed JC to slip in his second goal of the match, ending the game in the second overtime.
It was a tough result to handle, as we had put so much into the game, dominated the second half, and then lost in front of our home crowd, on a play we could have prevented. It just goes to show that you have to be mentally switched on to play a full 90, and sometimes 110 minutes if you’re going to succeed at this level. It’s something we’re still working on and will continue to do for the rest of the season.
Fortunately, now we have a week to recover and regroup before heading to Loyola this Saturday night with a chance to get back in the win column.
For this week, I want to make sure to thank all of those supporting us in the Athletic Department at UWM. This includes Kathy Litzau, Tom Vollman, Kevin Fitzgerald, Chris Zills, as well as former Athletic Director George Koonce and the many more that I might be forgetting to mention. The first three years here for me was a bit of a mess at times, but when the Athletic Department stepped in and brought us an excellent new coaching staff and a brand new state of the art field, it really showed us players their commitment to making UWM Men’s soccer something that we’d be proud to be a part of. I know that the program is only going to continue to improve from now on and I just wanted to make sure to thank all of those who have and continue to play a huge part in that.
