Beat the Heat
Week of Sept. 3, 2007

I had no idea I stopped writing my blog at the same time we started playing our spring games last semester. To briefly summarize, our record for the spring was 5-1. We lost our first game to MTSU in March. Then we won our next five games. In that streak, we beat Austin Peay, Tennessee Tech, Covenant, Vanderbilt, and Lipscomb. It was pretty easy to motivate the rising seniors to play Austin Peay, Tennessee Tech, and Vanderbilt. Because those schools are not on our fall schedule, it would be the last time the rising senior class would get a chance to beat them. They took advantage of their opportunity. Our numbers were good in the spring, and our depth was a factor in some of our victories.

August 2007 was the hottest August on record since the state of Tennessee began keeping records, 150 years ago. It was also the hottest pre-season since I began keeping records 13 years ago. I had to adjust my usual pre-season schedule and routine to avoid the 100+ degree temperatures we were having. Usually, we train for 2 hours in the morning, 45 minutes in the middle of the day, and 2 hours in the evening. This year, we trained 6-8am, which proved to be the nicest part of the day with temperatures in the 70’s. Our second session was 5-7pm. Most days, it was over 100 degrees at 5:00 and still in the 90’s at 8:00. I have never had a halftime at practice before, but that is what we were doing. We would train for about 45 minutes with water breaks every 15 minutes. Then, we would take about a 15 minute break in the shade.

Pre-season got off to a good start with most of our players performing extremely well on the fitness test. I thought it showed accountability, urgency, commitment, dedication, and hard work. Fitness was even more important than usual this year, because we could not prioritize fitness during pre-season because of the heat. It turns out we did not have to. We have some good players who did not pass the fitness test, but they are doing extra running now that we are training once a day and classes have started.

We did not have an exhibition game this year. I scheduled 20 games when I made this schedule in 2005. When USC-Upstate and Florida Gulf Coast joined the conference, I had 22 games on the schedule, so I had to cancel 2 of our games due to NCAA rules. I was nervous about our first game being a regular season game. We had an intrasquad scrimmage on August 26th, and we tried to make it as real as possible, but we still did not get all of the first game jitters out.

We opened up at home on August 31st against UT-Chattanooga. We were a little tentative in front of almost 400 fans, but we played a decent game and won 1-0. We played MTSU on Sunday, a game we had been looking forward to since losing to them in the spring 6-1. MTSU was ranked in the Top 10 in scoring last year. They are a good goal scoring team with some very dynamic attacking players. They are not quite up to full strength currently. I would compare our game against them to one of the original fights between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed.

We took some punches and even got knocked down a few times, but we had enough energy in the 12th round to get the knockout. In soccer terms, Micaela had to make some outstanding saves, and she had to handle a lot of crosses. Micaela got beat on a free kick, but Jessica Rix was there to head the ball out. We kept substituting our front six players and running at them. In the 105th minute, Ivy Bentley played a ball between their center back and goalkeeper. Erica Carter had the speed to beat the goalkeeper to the ball and push it by her into the goal.

We used 22 players in Friday’s game and 18 players in Sunday’s game. We hope to use our depth and speed as an advantage all year.

As a result of our outstanding team defending, individual defending, and goalkeeping, Micaela Crowley received Atantic Sun Defensive Player of the Week. I hope for our players to win many more Player of the Week honors this year.

Finally, we are always asking our players to come out early, late, or extra to work on little things that they do in the game. We just can’t cover everything in 90 minutes a day for 3 or 4 days a week. Thursday, the day before our first game, Lauren Uremovich and Jennifer Rix did some extra shooting at 10am. One of the types of shooting we worked on was finishing rebounds. Sure enough, in Friday’s game, Uey scored by finishing the rebound of Kari Lennon’s free kick at the top of the penalty area. The players’ commitment to detail really pays off.

I am excited about our 2007 team, our season, and our potential! Tune in to the BruInsider to follow us on our journey. I will report back after our games this weekend against Arkansas-Little Rock and Central Arkansas. They are our last home games for the month of September, Friday at 6:30 and Sunday at 2:00. See you there!