Soccer Poet

Being an avid disciple of all things Zeppelin, I was surfing for news regarding Robert Plant as he has a new album out (yes I said album, I turned 45 this year...) and I ran across a recent interview he just did with Canadian radio. The host ended the interview by playing a track from Plant's new album and wait for it....the track is titled "Monkey". Here is a link to the interview. Skip to 42:00.

Congrats to the United States for qualifying, albeit by the skin of our collective teeth, for another women’s World Cup. Remember when we were the preeminent force in women’s soccer? Well, that time has passed. The world has caught us, and some nations have more or less sped on by. The way this all has transpired has made me think of two words: Anson Dorrance. The U.S. had a head start on the rest of the world (and a much larger talent pool to choose from). But in the 19 years since the inaugural 1991 World Cup, the head start has evaporated. We’re no longer a favorite. Well, at least we’re no longer the favorite. And that was to be expected. I mean, how could we not expect a country like Brazil, where soccer is culture, to catch us? They produce and dispose of legitimate world-class superstars (remember Sissi?) every four years. Meanwhile, we can’t develop the player to replace Kris Lilly (keep in mind I am a huge fan of Lil) who has been on the national team since before the invention of DVDs and the internet. In Lil’s lifetime, she’s lived more years as a member of the national team than not. We’ve got to find a better way to develop players and keep them passionate about playing. But that’s not my point.

My point here is to laud Anson for what he’s done at UNC. Yes he had the same head start. And yes, the days when everyone else was playing for second place have long since passed (as evidenced by UNC’s 4-1 drubbing by Notre Dame last week), but for the better part of three decades, Dorrance kept the Heels atop the women’s soccer mountain, and even now they’re not far from the summit. The funny thing is… the man still has his critics. How? I have no idea. Here’s the thing… I don’t care what you think you know about soccer, when a guy has more rings than fingers, he should be presented with the mother of all immunity idols. I don’t care if the man couldn’t kick snow off a rock, he’s obviously doing something right. Just sayin’.

There are a lot of big events going on in the world this week, but obviously none bigger than SoccerPoet registering its 100^thsubscriber! Thanks very much to the other 99 of you! Actually, we’ve cleared the century mark by a comfortable margin which I’m told assures me of riches beyond my imagination. I don’t know why. It’s just a rule. Start a website, get 100 subscribers and someone will back a truck full of money up to your front step. That’s how it goes. The truck hasn’t arrived yet but I left the front light on for him with a note to wake me upon arrival.

Speaking of awake… that’s something I haven’t been a lot of lately. Y’all who tagged along from that other journal I kept know all about my annual bout with Ebola. This year is no exception. It crept its way into my life down in Orange Beach and has picked up steam ever since. These last two weeks have been miserable and the days sorta bleed together so my timeline is a little fuzzy. Okay. Real fuzzy. Think shag rug.

It may have been last Tuesday that I dragged myself to a doctor to do something about the sinus infection that had clobbered me on the Kansas flight. If you happened to be sitting near me on that flight you’ll be happy to know that I wasn’t holding my head and rocking back and forth simply because I’m a prize nutter trying to make the voices stop. Turns out, my left eardrum ruptured on that flight, and the right one nearly did also. And would you believe that my ears STILL haven’t cleared? Yeah. So that’s fun.

Anyway, the doc gave me a prescription for the sinus thing and that has mostly cleared up. What hasn’t budged is the overwhelming fatigue that has pretty much kneecapped me for 14-16 hours a day and shows no signs of relenting. When you’re getting 14 hours of sleep a day, you’re not going to get a lot of sympathy. But I assure you, it’s insanely frustrating, especially because in the evenings I start to feeling better. Last night for example, around 8 or 9 P.M., I staged a mini-rally and felt good enough to start writing this entry. I was certain that when I woke up today I’d be feeling right as rain. Today was gonna be the day! So I went to bed shortly after midnight and woke up at… wait for it… NOON! Are you freaking kidding me??? Here’s the thing… after 12 hours of sleep you think a body would wake up energized. And of course you’d be dead wrong. Well, I dragged my butt to the sofa and 30 minutes later I was back asleep. For another. Three. Hours.

So now four o’clock rolls around and my body clock has popped all its springs and my mind doesn’t have any answers. Try this one on: When it’s four o’clock in the afternoon, what the heck are you supposed to eat for your first meal of the day? Breakfast? Dinner? Candy?

This isn’t just today. This has been the pattern. So I’ve settled on a steady diet of everyone’s favorite anytime meal, PB&J. On white.

Yep. That’s me. Livin’ the dream.

So anyway, when your sleep pattern goes completely off the rails, you never know what time of day you’ll actually be awake. And because I usually don’t have the energy to do much more than watch TV, that’s what I do. What has happened to television in the past decade is amazing, and I mean that in the Holy smokes what in the world is this? kind of way. The way ‘reality’ television has snowballed is astonishing. For example, who knew a show about crab fishermen would be such a hit that it would spawn a copycat show about lobster fishermen? It seems practically every occupation has an accompanying reality show. There are shows about trash collectors, pawn shops, ghost seekers, meter maids and hopeless addicts among many, many others. There’s a show called Hoarders… about hoarders… who, well, they hoard things. And those are just the shows where no one gets voted off. Even the UFC has a reality show because, you know, getting in the cage and going primal against the best fighters in the world isn’t real enough.

Now animals have their own reality shows, which is to be expected if Animal Planet is going to fill a 24 hour programming card. And animal shows, my friends, is where we have finally crossed the line. In a matrix of television ironies, animal programming has jumped the shark.

I’m fine with a lot of the animal programs. Heck, I’m fine with almost all of them. Who doesn’t love watching a family of antelopes being all warm and fuzzy before the hungry cheetahs lunge out of the underbrush and break bread? But a few nights ago I found the show that has to make any rational person ask, “Who on earth would possibly watch this?”

I’m speaking of course of the show entitled… My Dog Ate What? I promise you I am not making that up. That’s really the name of a television show. I didn’t watch the show and I can’t imagine anyone ever would, but I read the description. It’s exactly what you think it would be. The contents of dog stomachs are examined for missing household items.

Really.

You know, there are moments in our history that I wish I could have been a part of… Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence… Cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown… the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Now added to that list is the meeting where some lunatic pitched the idea for this show about what the neighbor’s dog may have eaten, and the guys in the suits across the table saying, “Yes! You’re really onto something here. This is a great idea! Let’s make it happen!”

And here’s the thing… how’d you like to be the guy who has to sell the advertising for that show? Can you imagine pitching that to… well, to anyone? Who could their target audience possibly be? Rats?

Anyway, My Dog Ate What has inspired me to create a couple of television networks of my own. In early 2012 I’ll be launching TBN… The Bibliography Network. It’s going to be 24 hours of rolling end credits from shows and movies, just in case you need to reference, for example, the key grip from Mystic Pizza (Shunil Borpujari) or the best boy from Cry-Baby (Edgar Martin). Genius, right? It’ll be the first television network in history that doesn’t have to pay for talent.

As soon as TBN is launched and stable, fast on its heels will be my true labor of love, The Weather History Network.

Our motto: Yesterday’s weather with 100% accuracy. See the difference? It’s thinking completely outside of the box! Weather forecasters are basically just guessing, right? They make mistakes. A lot of them. But not my crack team of weather history experts! Forgot how cold you were yesterday? Not a problem. The WHN team is on the case! Forgot where you left your umbrella? WHN can tell you if you even used it yesterday. See where this is going? The practical applications for this technology are boundless. And I’m in on the ground floor!

Okay, naptime. Thanks for subscribing. Tell a friend.

Friends, it is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of Jeep who drove her final quarter mile this past Saturday morning. She went out as she would have chosen, much like we all would – making another airport run. But let us not dwell on the sorrow in our hearts, but instead celebrate the life of our newly departed sister as she crosses over to a smoother, better lit highway free of toll booths, texting drivers and flattened armadillos, where windshields need never be scraped of bugs, and where her miles per gallon won’t bankrupt her heavenly driver.

For over 200,000 miles, Jeep never met a stranger. She was inviting and accessible – the Taylor Swift of automobiles. She was comfortable with her celebrity in a way few are. Oh how the people would love to ride in her with the top down and the doors off as she coasted along the sands of Daytona Beach. With the kayak bungeed to her roll bar and fishing poles jetting over the tailgate, she would sashay along A1A like a pageant beauty to the delight of all who lined the street, like heavily tattooed bikers and half-in-the-bag spring breakers staggering back to their motel rooms.

Jeep’s favorite trips were the 400 mile trips down to Key West, especially the night hauls that included a roadside camping spot somewhere south of Marathon. Jeep loved to camp, to cool her hood under a starry sky. And on each stay in Key West she would lay quiet as a homeless person scavenged her for loose change or an old pair of shoes. Jeep knew to be charitable. Some nights she was home to the neighborhood cats, and once to a raccoon. And sometimes, when the top was down and the skies would suddenly turn midnight black and open up like they only do in Florida, and the rains would fall in thick sheets, Jeep did a great impression of a fish bowl. Many motorists would pass and point at us as the rain hammered down. And they would laugh. Oh how they would laugh. And how I wish they would have stopped to introduce themselves.

But Jeep was no diva. She was tough… a mudder. She loved getting her tires wet and her windshield dirty. Twice she was rear-ended and suffered no visible damage. The cars that rammed her? Ever stepped on a Coke can? That’s what their front ends looked like. Justice served.

I was 26 when we met in Macon, GA in October of 1994. I drove her off the lot that night. She was my first, and still my only, new car. I had hair then, and also hopes of a bright future. And Jeep could comfortably purr in the low 90 m.p.h. range. But together we aged.

By the end Jeep was a wreck. Her heater hadn’t worked since the 90s. She’d gone through three tops and four stereos. The dash lights stopped lighting in 2001, around the same time the horn stopped working. The paint has peeled off her hood and the driver’s side door is rusting through – much like the floor. The emergency break is for show only. The cigarette lighter is just a hole. The right indicator died shortly after we moved to Athens. She tops out at about 74 m.p.h. unless we have a stiff tailwind or are going off the side of a mountain. I don’t even know where we jettisoned the back seat, but it’s been years since I’ve seen it. And the front seats? Well, they are so battered that they are in a permanent state of severe recline. I have to drive with two pillows supporting my back or else I would be staring up at the canvas top. But she never complained.

When she came to her final stop just outside of the Atlanta airport, on the wrong side of a blind curve with cars zooming by at dangerous speeds, Jeep still looked so peaceful, so casual, like the beach girl she was born to be. But alas, she was gone – the victim of a dropped transmission. A senseless tragedy.

So tonight, as we say our final farewells, let us do so with joy in our hearts, a fond remembrance of a free spirit who lived a full, happy and eventful life, and who never ran over a house pet.

Thank you for attending. May you go in peace.

Please sign the guest book on your way out.

Yesterday was the closest thing I’ve ever known to being on Death Row, awaiting the inevitable arrival of the black-hooded executioner. Not exactly the way you hope to feel on Selection Show Monday.

When we got back from Orange Beach on Saturday night we knew we were more than a bubble team. We were THE bubble team. In a 64-team tournament, we were either going to be elated to be #64 or devastated to be #65. We also knew our chances would be heavily swayed by Sunday’s results. What we didn’t need was upsets. We needed the favorites, the teams who would go to the NCAAs regardless of whether they won or lost, to win. Every one of those teams that got upset allowed the team that beat them to eat up one more slot on the dance card. No we didn’t need upsets. We needed favorites to steamroll the underdogs. But upsets were exactly what we got.

A UC-Irvine win would have helped us. They lost.

A Hofstra win would have helped us. They lost.

A Denver win would have helped us. They lost.

A win or tie by Michigan would have helped us a lot. They lost. With 13 seconds left. In the second overtime.

And with each upset the pin prodded a little deeper into our bubble.

It’s not that we aren’t one of the best 64 teams in the nation. That’s just silly. It would be difficult to find someone who would argue that we aren’t one of the Top 25. But the tournament field isn’t filled out that way. And in the end, it wasn’t our losses that did us in – though they certainly didn’t help matters. The loss to Tennessee was the nail in our coffin, but we could have survived that if not for three ties. We tied three very winnable games and ultimately those were the games that came back to bite us.

So we, the coaches, spent the day replaying those moments in the season, any one of which would have cemented us a spot in the field. If one of those 29 shots at Ole Miss had found the net... Or one of the 27 we fired at Arkansas... Or the 15 against Kentucky. If we can grind out one more goal in the span of those 330 minutes and 71 shots, right now we’re dancing.

The thing about being a bubble team is you just never know. I mean we knew, but we just didn’t completely, absolutely, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt for sure know. We did the math and we concluded we’d be left out, but there’s always that chance. And for all the moaning we’ve been doing about our travel for the past few weeks, we would have given anything to have to get on one more bus or one more plane and to sleep in one more hotel bed for just one more night.

We were 99.9% sure that our season was over and we wished that the reaper would just come along and get it over with. Unfortunately, just like everyone else in bubble land, we wouldn’t be certain-certain of our fate until the selections were announced at 4:30 that afternoon.

Nooj had the team over to his house to watch the selection show on ESPNU, and when the final bracket was announced and our fate was sealed, that room was so quiet you could hear dust land on a sponge.

I felt especially bad for the seniors. We all did. They had been to the tournament 3 times. It would have been nice to send them off going 4 for 4.

I also felt cheated. Not by the selection committee. We didn’t win winnable games and that’s no one’s fault but our own. I felt cheated by some greater force. I felt cheated because this team played its best soccer of the year in its final two matches and we all wanted to see how far we could go playing like that. It didn’t matter who. We wanted to play Stanford and Carolina and Portland and Notre Dame. Because the way we finished, there wasn’t a team in the nation we couldn’t sting. I really just wanted to watch this team play more soccer.

Instead I went home and deleted a bunch of games I had on the DVR... games recorded at a time when every team in the nation had the potential to be our opponent in the NCAAs. Now they were just space-eaters that needed to be cleared to make more room for reruns of The Office.

Instead of going dancing, we have to take the lesson. The NCAA tournament isn’t a divine right. It’s a privilege. It’s a privilege that you earn in September and October. And if you want to dance, you gotta take care of your business. You gotta win your winnable games because if you don’t, there’s a price to pay. Hopefully it’s a lesson we don’t have to learn more than once.

The word that comes to mind is urgency. It’s the that one concept that coaches understand because we have the benefit of hindsight and the one concept we try desperately to make our players understand because they don’t.

Urgency. It means get it done right freaking now. Because if you don’t, you have to wait ten months before you can even start to ride the ride again.

So the question was, rhetorically, “How bad can a bottle of ketchup go in seven hours?”  We were cleaning out our unit at the Summer House condos in Orange Beach, AL, trying to decide which of our foodstuffs would make the cut for the return trip to Athens and which would be jettisoned down the trash chute.  This particular bottle of ketchup cost us $1.79 at the Orange Beach Publix.  That’s one dollar and seventy-nine cents.  Less than a Starbucks venti.  Less than pretty much anything.

No, money wasn’t an issue.  The thought of buying food and then throwing it away when it was still perfectly useful, barely used – that was the issue.  Plenty of other food had already been selected for the trip home.  But that food had been given cooler priority and our three coolers were filled to capacity.  If the ketchup was coming home, I would be the sole caregiver for its storage and transport.  The mustard and mayonnaise were also a part of the pool of eligible candidates – also barely touched.  But this is about the ketchup.

Why am I thinking about ketchup?  How did this conversation hijack my brain?  It’s like I’m paralyzed.  How long have I been staring at this little bottle of ketchup? For Pete's sake, pull yourself together, man!

In my own defense, I was running on five hours sleep and still in a bit of a fog.  Okay, a big fog. Thing is, I easily could’ve gotten more sleep.  Could’ve gotten another three hours if I chose.  But last night I saw something special.  So I decided to forgo sleep just so I could see it again.

When last we met, I was recapping our abysmal outing with the Volunteers in Knoxville. It was our last regular season game and we knew it.  Losing would seriously damage any chance we had at an NCAA bid and we knew that too.  And with so many reasons to play, we just didn’t.  It was like our tank had hit E four days earlier against Auburn and we couldn’t find a gas station.

It was scary.  It was scary when it happened in Athens, and scarier still in Knoxville, because as a coach you have to wonder if it’s even fixable.  Our kids were just spent.

So we had hit an emotional and physical dip - an undeniable malaise.  We had become passionless automatons riding a conveyor belt, caught in a pattern of pack-bus-match-bus-unpack-repeat.  Sports psychologists will line up to tell you that you have to be stronger than the external factors, stronger than those things beyond your control.  They will tell you that you have to rise above human nature.  And for a while we did just that.  But eventually the load became too much to carry.  The too many hours on a fleet of busses; enough hotels to break the bank in Monopoly; the cycle of returning to Athens under a blanket of darkness in the wee-hours and squeezing in a glorified nap before rising for morning classes -  all of it had led to our collapse.  In the end we revealed our humanness.

The story of the year in women’s college soccer arrived a few days ago when FSU Coach Mark Krikorian left his starters in Tallahassee and took a team of reserves to the ACC Tournament where they were promptly dispatched by Wake Forest.  Krikorian felt that there was a bigger fish to fry, specifically the quest for an NCAA national title, and that resting his starters would be the best way to butter the pan.   That decision has brought a firestorm onto Krikorian and everyone in soccer had an opinion, even before the ACC carpet-bombed FSU with penalties for devaluing their premier women’s soccer event.  Well, from where I’ve sat these past few weeks, namely the front row of a charter bus, that idea doesn’t sound all that outlandish.  The lion’s share of our attention has been devoted to finding ways to buy our players some rest.  We’ve shortened training sessions.  We’ve cancelled some.  We’ve backed up wake-up calls.  We’ve done whatever we could.  The only other thing we could’ve done was to leave our starters behind, but we never had that luxury.  FSU is an NCAA Tournament lock.  We are anything but.  So we couldn’t throw the SEC Tournament.  Fact is, because of our loss at Tennessee, we probably had to win it.

We arrived in Orange Beach on Tuesday afternoon anticipating a Wednesday kick-off against Auburn.  But the gulf was hammered by rains late Tuesday and all of Wednesday which pushed the first round matches back to Thursday.  I wasn’t too sad to see us get one more day of rest.  On Thursday morning the players seemed upbeat and energized in a way that I hadn’t seen in weeks.  And on Thursday night at roughly 8 P.M., something amazing started to happen.  The Dawgs remembered how good they really were.

I love soccer when it is played the right way.  I love soccer when the team in possession values the ball and doesn’t hurry to give it back to the opponent.  I love when one team takes its time to probe the opponent by stringing passes together in long sequences and the opponent chases with dogged futility.  That was how this team was designed to play.  And on Thursday night we did just that.

So many times I watch a game and see two teams play with all the artistry of a fat roofer hammering a nail.  What I saw on Thursday looked nothing like that.  What I saw on Thursday looked like surgery.  From the moment the game kicked off it looked like our players had been bathed in the bright light of Kenny Dalglish.  We remembered how to pass a ball, how to keep a ball… how to make an opponent chase.  It was glorious.

And naturally we fell behind 1-0.

In the 15^thminute Traci Dreesen inadvertently deflected an Auburn cross into our net.  The official scorer gave credit for the goal to an Auburn player.  The scorer was and still is wrong.  It should have been recorded as an own-goal.  Funnier still, there is also, ‘officially’ speaking, actually an assist attached to that own goal.

I wouldn’t have mentioned Traci’s name but the story as a whole commands it, because Traci Dreesen wasn’t just a little bit special that night.  Traci Dreesen was freaking spectacular.  Traci had an awakening after our Mercer mishap and since then she’s been a fixture in our starting line-up and the engine in our midfield.  And as good as I felt she had been before the SEC Tournament, against Auburn she was on a whole different level.  In a team where everyone was playing at a high level, Dreesen was exalted.  We paired her with Eddy in the middle and that combination was the hub of a possession wheel that sprayed passes across the park like a six-jet sprinkler head sprays water streams across the front lawn.  We went to the half still down a goal, but we had seen a lot of the ball and Auburn had expended a lot of energy trying to get it back from us.

At the half we didn’t make any significant tactical adjustments.  What we did do is lay it on the line.  If we didn’t find a way to win that game, our team as we know it would be done.  The program would live on, but as it stood, if things didn’t change on the scoreboard, this would be the last time this specific group of players would ever play together again.

The message must’ve hit a nerve for as good as we thought we were in the first half, it paled beside our second half performance because in those second 45 minutes, we were the best soccer team I’ve ever been a part of.  We played with an urgency befitting the direness of our predicament but never abandoned our style.  Far from it.  We actually got better at it.  It was our most complete half of soccer.  We were as close to perfect as a coach could ever hope to see.  And in the 67^thminute Kelli Corless played a quick free kick to Traci Dreesen.  Dreesen fired from 25 and her shot ricocheted into the Auburn net to knot the score.  The game was 1-1 and Dreesen had both goals.

Our opportunities were abundant but the goals were scarce.  Locandro flared a header from Lex’s cross  that forced a great save.  Miller spun a couple of defenders but her shot clanged the outside of the post.  We got a corner with about ten to play.  We’ve had over 100 corner kicks this year and Bailey, because she stands at 5’11”, has gone forward for almost every one of them.  So when she moved forward for this corner kick I said to no one in particular on the bench, “C’mon Bay.  You’ve been up there 108 times.  Can you please score a goal?”  The ball came across with high hopes... but again nothing.

We couldn’t finish the job in regulation even though the disparity in the shot margin continued to grow.  Still knotted at 1-1 after the first overtime we told our reserves to start thinking about their penalty kicks.  I was also steadying for the unthinkable because this game was setting itself as one of soccer’s signature, evil masterpieces where the team that utterly dominates ends up losing on an anomaly – an inapposite foray by the outmatched team that almost by accident culminates with the ball finding its way into the net of the better team as if pulled there by the force of a black hole.  We’ve suffered that fate too often this season and one more miscarriage of justice would have had me jumping off the 5^thfloor balcony at the Summer House Condominiums.

In the second overtime a splendid parry by Auburn’s keeper gave us another corner.  Lex curled it across the six.  This time Bailey popped off the goalkeeper and redirected her header down through the tangle of legs, arms and torsos and into the side netting for a sensational finish to our season’s best all around performance.  The dog-pile, well, dawg-pile, ensued and we had finally had a dramatic finish go in our favor. And yes there was the excitement generated by the dramatic finish, but there was also another type of excitement forming – a soccer ecstasy.  It was about more than just the end.  It was about the whole of the game, the whole of the performance.  We saw us at our best.  It was like the light bulb had gone on for everyone on the same night and we finally figured out the combination to unlock any door that may end up in our path.  Finally, in our 20^thgame of the season, we finally figured it out.  And now that we had it, we craved more.  A lot more.

When you’re about to play Florida, no matter who you are or what you say out loud, it’s hard not to have a twinge of doubt about your chances because to beat them you’re going to have to be both very good and probably also a little bit lucky.  But the Auburn match cured us of any lingering sense of inferiority.  We were going to play Florida in the semi-final and this time we were doing it convinced that quite simply, we were the better soccer team.

We lost 3-1 to Florida, conceding the third goal in the final three minutes as we threw bodies forward trying to equalize.  So if you weren’t there, if you didn’t see what I saw, if you’re opinion will be married to the score-line, you might just want to stop reading because you probably won’t believe what I’m about to say.

Well, I’ll just try to repeat what I told the team after the match…

“Last night... the game against Auburn… it was freaking great.  And it wasn’t just great because of the dramatic finish.  It was great because of how we played the game… how we passed the ball… how we played with patience and composure… how we refused to abandon our style.  It was like somewhere in the past 48 hours we remembered who we were.  And it was just sensational to watch and I was thinking that if we weren’t going to win this tournament, that if I had to go down, that was the team I wanted to go down with.  That was a team I could lose with and have a clear conscience because last night you were fantastic.  It was the best performance from any team I’ve ever coached.  And tonight… tonight you were even better.”

And I meant every word.

I had never seen Florida have to spend so much time being the team without the ball.  I mean we were flat out toying with them for long stretches.  At least three times during the first half I laughed and said to myself, “This is unbelievable.  They can’t get the ball from us.”

I watch a lot of women’s soccer matches.  On Monday and Tuesday of each week I’ll watch our two games from the weekend and then at least three matches of our opponent for the upcoming Friday.  Then I’ll mix in one for our upcoming Sunday opponent.  That’s a minimum of six matches a week.  And let me tell you something… it hardly ever looks like what happened on that field last night.

Robin said it best.  She said that it was a great game because athleticism wasn’t the distinguishing characteristic.  She’s absolutely right.  It wasn’t about speed and power and jamming a round peg into a square goal.  Last night was about technical ability and tactics – those were the hallmarks.  It was two very good teams putting on what may be the best played game I’ve ever been a part of and it was an honor to freeze my butt off on that sideline just to see it.

Normally when a game ends I’ll get a hold of the video and take a quick look at the big plays – the moments that directly impacted the final score.  Last night I watched that game in its entirety for no other reason than to enjoy it all over again.  I wanted to see if, through the lens of the camera, we played as well as I thought we had.  And you know what?  We absolutely did.

So now, like another fifteen or so nervous teams across the U.S., we have to sit and wait for a committee to decide if we get to play another day.  And the thought of it ending now, well, I can’t process that.  At the end of each season I’m sad.  I’m sad the ride is over.  I’m sad for the players – particularly the seniors.  And that won’t change.  But this time I’m also sad for the soccer.  I want this season to live on just to see how good we can really be, how far we can really go.  I’m not ready for this season to be over.  This story hasn’t been finished being written.  We’ve just started scratching the surface.  Playing the way we’ve played the past two nights, we have a legitimate chance to beat any team in the country.  The question is, will we get that chance?

In every other season I’ve ever coached, when it comes to an end, I just want to take a rest.  I want to curl up on the couch for a day or two and think about something other than soccer – like Cool Ranch Doritos.   But on that bus back from Orange Beach my to-do list had just one item.  I didn’t want to sleep in or spend two days under a Snuggie watching Law and Order and getting fatter.  All I wanted to do, with urgency, was get home and start cutting up video.  I want to cut up video of us at our very best in case we make the NCAAs, and also in case we don’t.  Because regardless of when Georgia Soccer takes the field again, there’s a new blueprint that we’re going to follow.  We’re going to watch ourselves playing the game the way it was meant to be played, and then we’re going to commit to making it look like that for the ever-after.  I hope this group of players gets to stay together because they are the ones that redefined Georgia Bulldog Soccer.  They are the ones who just made the template.  I’m hoping that they get to ride this ride a little while longer.  They freaking deserve it.

Yeah, yeah – I get it. Bad me. Bad, bad me! But before I stumble into my own defense, let's first get a big shout out to the Nugents, Steve and Jana, who just grew their family by one with the addition of Connor Jack this past Tuesday. Woo Hoo! Connor Jack checked in at a happy, healthy 6.5 lbs. Been quite a week for Steve because about 48 hours before CJ's arrival, Nooj was embarking on his quest to run the Athens Half Marathon, a feat that he accomplished in a fashionable 2:34 (h:m). Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes it's worth just a little bit more. How much did crossing that finish line mean to the Noojer? You tell me.

And just in case you still doubt the super-human life force that is Robin Confer, she completed her 13.1 miles in an hour and 36 minutes.

Now back to our story...

Every year one SEC team sorta draws the short straw and ends up traveling for 5 straight weeks; 6 if you make the SEC tournament; 7 should you make the NCAAs and 8 should you advance past the first weekend and so on. This year that team is us. We’ve logged a lot of miles over the past five weeks and hopefully we’ll log many more.

To be honest, it’s exhausting. I thought that maybe I was just being lazy, so when I put it out there two weeks ago that I had stopped unpacking my suitcase I was surprised to hear that the three other coaches, the trainer and our video manager were all doing the same. We launder the clothes that need it. Everything else stays put in the suitcase that I no longer even bother trying to hide. It just sits there in the middle of the bedroom floor waiting for its next call to action. Which happens to be tomorrow.

Tomorrow we leave for the SEC Tournament in Orange Beach, AL. Steve, Mandy and the players are flying. Robin, me and the rest of the support staff will be aboard a sleeper bus that will meet the group at the Pensacola Airport around noon. On Wednesday night we face Auburn in our first round match.

Point is, time to write has been nearly impossible to find. Put it this way... ever needed a tooth extracted? Like really badly? Like when it's an abscess and it wakes you in the middle of the night like a lightning bolt exploding in your molar time after time after time without mercy testing the bounds of your sanity? You know those days when you know that tooth absolutely must come out right stinkin' now? Yeah, I had that night last Wednesday (and Thursday and Friday, etc.) but didn't have the time to do anything about it except be mean and bitter and in agony. Finally got that sucker yanked today - Hallelujah! Talk about making time for me! I've never looked so forward to having a surgeon sawing away in my mouth. So I'm not even sure I've been medically cleared to write this entry. But I'm going to fight through it. Gonna tough it out. Gonna type through the pain.

Friday night was absolutely insane for the SEC, particularly for the west. In the east, Florida met South Carolina with the winner earning the title of SEC champs – Florida won 1-0. But in the west it was abacus madness. Going into the night four teams – Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss – had a chance to win at least a share of the west crown, while Auburn (the points leader heading into the night) and company also faced the possibility of not even reaching Orange Beach. The top four spots were mathematically settled going into the night. Those slots would be occupied Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee although not necessarily in that order. The next four spots would be decided on Friday with the titillating possibility of a four-way tie for the final two spots. And it all came down to 17 seconds.

‘Bama was 17 seconds away from an up[set that would have guaranteed LSU a share of the west title and left Auburn at home during the SEC tournament. But Auburn found the miracle equalizer and then finished off the Tide in overtime. So instead of potentially winning the west, ‘Bama misses the Orange Beach party and LSU finishes second in the west behind champions Auburn. Kentucky needed a win to get in and they produced a shocking score-line, dropping Vandy 6-1 in Lexington. Vandy needed help to stay afloat and they got it in a big way when Mississippi State stunned Ole Miss 2-1 in Starkville. Insane night, indeed.

As for the Dawgs… I am so far behind I’ll never be able to give you the detail from our last however many matches. Even if I had the time, I could hardly remember the details, so I’m just going to try to catch you up with one swing of the bat. When last we left the Dawgs were on a bus to Gainesville…

Well, we were 8 minutes away from a sweep for the ages. After a 1-0 win at South Carolina, the Dawgs jumped out to an early lead on Florida when Laura Eddy picked off a backpass, dribbled around the Gator’s goalkeeper and slid the ball into an empty net. We knew it would be difficult to make one goal stand up, so we were pulling our hair out over our near misses. We had three superb chances to extend our lead but the finishing failed us. I knew we were creating chances and having the better of the run of play, but I was surprised to look up at the scoreboard during the second half and see that we held a 12-5 lead in shots. But Florida is a good team and they got the equalizer on a tremendous individual effort to knot it at 1-1 with eight minutes left. UF had a chance to win it in regulation when they were awarded a PK n the 86^thminute, but Ashley Baker snuffed out the chance and we stayed level at ones. We looked the better side in overtime and in a moment that bore an eerie resemblance to Stanford, I figured that we had worn them down. But we gave a ball away cheaply coming out of our own end and that same ball took a remarkable flight high into the far-post netting to give UF the win.

We got home late that night… around 1 a.m. if memory serves me.

On Wednesday at 1 P.M. we were on a bus to Tuscaloosa for a Thursday match against the Crimson Tide. It gave me the chance to visit some friends in Birmingham and I had my first dining experience at a P.F. Chang’s. (Yes. My first time. I’m that guy.) I assure you it won’t be my last.

Thursday morning I got on the bus with four of the girls who needed to take exams under the supervision of an Alabama proctor. It’s a pretty cool system here in the SEC and players taking exams on enemy soil is actually pretty common. While the girls were busy trying to regurgitate all the info they had memorized at breakfast, I had the opportunity to stroll around campus for a little while and snap some photos.

Okay, if you ever visit the University of Alabama, there’s only one name you really ought to know – Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant. I don’t know if, legally speaking, you could have more things named after one person on one campus without naming the entire university after him. I mean the man has five, count ‘em five buildings, a street and a pretty darn big football stadium named after him. You should make sure you visit them all after your tour of the Paul Bear Bryant museum.

There you may run into the Crimson Tide athletes who were recognized for their achievements in the classroom by being presented with the Paul Bear Bryant Award. And trust me, it goes on and on and on.

As for the game… well, Robin and I were worried. The girls looked tired at the hotel that morning. They looked tired in their warm-up. Before the starting line-ups we literally begged them to summons the energy to come out and play with passion and urgency because it just didn’t look like it was gonna happen. But then the game started and… Holy Smokes! Sometimes a team just has one of those nights where everything seems to click. That was the night we were having. As soon as the game kicked off we established a wonderful passing rhythm and we knew that if we could maintain that type of movement and discipline, we were going to cause problems.

Lex scored in the fourth minute. Gibbo added to it in the 43^rdminute and we went into the break up 2-0. Even though we were up two goals, I was worried, because let’s face it, that’s more or less what I’m paid to do and to be fair, I’m almost overqualified to do it. It was Bama’s Senior Night and even people who know very little about soccer still seem to know about the precariousness of a two-goal lead. If we didn’t fire out of the locker room, the game would set itself nicely for the ‘miracle’ comeback. As we walked out to the field I muttered to myself, “Next goal wins.”

In the fiftieth minute Marah played a beautiful ball into Miller’s path behind the ‘Bama defense. Miller side-stepped the keeper and was summarily fouled and we were given our first PK of the year. Lex stepped up and buried it and the Dawgs left Tuscaloosa with a 3-0 win. (All three goals were Big 5 qualifiers). The Bear would not approve.

It was ‘split weekend’ for the SEC, which means that every team plays home and away. The split weekend ensures that every team has a 6-5 or 5-6 mix of home and away games. Long story. Ask me sometime. Point is, we got to play the next one at home against Auburn.

Sunday was Senior Day and that’s pretty much what we looked like, a bunch of seniors… as in citizens. We looked flat to start and never really got the spark we needed. We lost 2-1 with Sooz getting our goal. It was a fair result and it scared me because the team we put on the field looked like a team that was at best uninspired and at worst, exhausted. That was bad news because we knew we wouldn’t be playing another game in Athens.

Four days later we were back on the road to Knoxville for a reenactment of the Auburn game. We were flat and listless and any other words that mean the opposite of lively and dynamic. Gibbo scored a nice goal to get us out front but the result was the same, a 2-1 loss for the Dawgs.

So we finished the regular season fourth in the SEC which coincidentally equates to fourth in the SEC east. Looking back it’s not really the losses that get my ‘if only’ nerve twitching. It’s the ties. It’s the ties in those games where we clearly had enough great chances to win the game. But that’s the thing about college soccer. You gotta take care of business when business comes knockin’. There’s no do-overs. That’s why, when it’s time to put that jersey on and represent your university, you’ve got to find a way to dig deep and play with fire and fight and urgency – to play like your life depends on it - because it’s a one chance deal. You gotta get it done even when you might not be feeling it. And the best teams… well, the best teams are filled with players who understand that before they graduate.

Hope to see you in Orange Beach! Now I'm gonna go have myself an ice cream dinner (Sometimes the silver lining is right there in your freezer).