"Almost as Good as the World Cup Octopus" (posted on September 23, 2010)

Hello to all the family, friends, and athletes out there! I hope everyone is doing GREAT!

As all of you may already know from reading our game report, we are on a little streak right now! Over the weekend, we played a team from Illinois and that game was pretty fun for us, but not so fun for them. We won 19-0! When you see the score, you might think we were playing american football rather than soccer. But, we just got to it from the beginning and, I guess you could say, just took care of business. That game was good to get some of our younger players some experience and playing time and build some chemistry as a unit. After that game we were 5-2-1 on the season, coasting on a four-game winning streak, and a five-game unbeaten streak! So we were full of confidence and ready to start conference when Indiana Wesleyan came into town on Tuesday night.

We started our conference season on Tuesday with Indiana Wesleyan as our opener, and we were ready to go and get after them early. Everyone outside our locker room was doubting our chances in this game because last season they smashed us 5-0 at their home field. But this was a personal game for me, I really wanted to win this game, and, as a senior captain, I wanted to do anything in my power to make sure that my teammates and I came out winners once that final whistle blew after 90 minutes. Needless to say, we were victorious!

My roommate Tyler Kitchen was talking to a friend earlier that day and he predicted a 2-1 win for us and, ironically, we won 2-1. I guess you could say that he is similar to Paul, the world cup octopus! But anyways, it was a very exciting game, as we jumped on them early with the opening goal, and a goal that literally crossed the goal line with less than half a second left in the first half! So the game was very interesting from beginning to end and our defense, ONCE AGAIN, stifled our opponent's offensive attacks and held strong for the victory. We've only given up eight goals in nine games, compared to the 36 goals we've scored in those nine games!

So all I want to say is that on behalf of the men's soccer team, we greatly appreciate all the support and I hope that we can continue to get more and more fans out to our games to cheer us to victory! I want to bring the conference title back home to Marian University this season and we need your support to achieve that!

I also want to give a shout out to my goalkeeper James Dulhanty and my forward Fabricio Lemus for winning defensive and offensive player of the week for our conference! Congratulations also goes out to Mika Jackson and Julia Naab as well for winning offensive and defensive player of the week on the women's soccer side!

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