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 ninth blog entry.
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Following the gut-wrenching loss to Green Bay, when Monday rolled around we knew it was time to brush ourselves off and get back to work. A good week of practice followed and we went into Saturday night’s match against Loyola feeling confident about getting back to a .500 record in Horizon League play.
The game started slow for us again, which unfortunately seems to be becoming a habit of ours. However, we got into halftime level at 0-0 and knew that we could make amends in the second half. As Coach Shepherd put it, “a couple weeks from now, nobody’s going to remember the bad first 45 minutes once we win the game in the second half.”
Starting the half with that attitude, we began to take the game to the Ramblers. Although we didn’t get a goal in regular time, we felt that we were really knocking on the door going into extra time. Finally with only about a minutes time to spare, freshman Riley Weiner used some intelligent skill on the ball to jink his way past a couple defenders at the top of the box and slotted the ball far-post and into the back of the net.
Our bench exploded onto the field in a similar fashion as we did after Robbie Boyd’s winner at Valpo earlier in the season. Personally, I fell off the bench as I kind of forgot about the fact that I was icing an injured ankle at the time, but the pain and embarrassment was worth it when getting to celebrate with the rest of the team on their field.
Once again we proved to not only ourselves but the rest of the league that in any given game, against any given team, we’re definitely a squad to be reckoned with and that the goal can come from anywhere. Furthermore, we have two conference home games to look forward to in our attempt to break into the upper echelon of the league. We’ll hope to carry this momentum forward when we face Oakland in a tough non-conference match-up on Wednesday and then UIC at home on Saturday night.
This week I just want to thank the traveling fans that have made our seemingly never-ending road games a lot easier. But in particular, I want to thank one fan who made it down this weekend that’s been not only one of the soccer team’s biggest fans, but a fan of all of the sports here at UWM: Michael Poll. If you don’t know Mike, you’re really missing out. He’s a ubiquitous presence on campus and his unwavering support towards all athletes at UWM is a huge lift. He’s one of the loudest fans at games, which really boosts your morale when you’re playing in the game.
So whether he’s shooting hoops at the Klotchke, wooing some ladies around campus, or coming into the locker room to give us the latest run-down on his latest travels of the day, Michael never fails to put a smile on your face and is truly the best 12th man we could ever have. Cheers Mike! Until next week,
Joga Bonito
