The University of Evansville women’s soccer team is allowing its fans to get a behind-the-scenes look at the squad on their road trips throughout the season. The players will take turns writing journal entries from their own perspective, with their humor, and they will be posted here on gopurpleaces.com. The newest entries will appear first.
Oct. 15 - At Northern Iowa
From the perspective of freshman Taylor Brand
Iowa, the state of all states. Our journey to Northern Iowa began (an hour behind schedule) on Thursday afternoon. After loading the bus with enough stuff to last two months, we started driving. Once we started moving, most everyone immediately fell asleep. Three or four hours into the trip we FINALLY stopped for dinner. When our bellies were finally full of breadsticks and pasta, we got back on the bus and continued our travels. Our Thursday night ended with us arriving at the hotel somewhere, no one knows exactly where, in Illinois. Everyone was quite pleased when we found out we only had to share a room with one other person. AKA we each got our own queen-size bed. Best night ever.
Friday started with a quick hotel breakfast, followed by getting back on the bus. We drove for three hours, most of us napping and a few dedicated students studying, and then stopped for lunch. Once we finished lunch, we loaded back on the bus for a quick ride to the hotel. Upon arriving at the hotel we had some down time, and then we headed out to the fields for a light practice. The practice was quick and easy, despite the hurricane force winds. When practice was finished, we had two hours to shower, complete an hour of studying, and be ready to leave for dinner. To say the least dinner, with buckets of peanuts, as many rolls as a soccer team could eat, and steak, was a huge success. After a long day of traveling and preparing for the next day’s game, we made it back to the hotel and called it a night.
Game day. At breakfast we completed our detailed scouting report of Northern Iowa, meticulously prepared by assistant coach Chris Cahill. Once breakfast was eaten and we knew the opposing team as well as we knew our own, we headed back to the fields to warm up for our game. All eleven of us who could play, yes only eleven, completed the warm up and stepped on the field to begin the match. Unfortunately the game did not go our way, but we fought hard until the end. After showering and getting Chinese food for dinner, we started our supposed ten hour journey home. Rather than getting home at four in the morning, our bus driver, Big Mike, got us home by two (he of course obeyed the speed limit the entire way). Everyone was pleased to get back to get a good night’s rest.
Oct. 9 - At Illinois State
From the perspective of freshman Tatiana Pagan
Our trip to play Illinois State, was yet another normal away game for us. With an early morning departure from Evansville at 8am, we readied ourselves for a long five-hour bus ride. A pregnant Krista brought just the right breakfast foods for a hungry soccer team. Donuts!! What a score that was. Another great food selection by our craving coach led us to a delicious lunch. This was a great start to an away game. We arrived at the hotel around 2pm and got to get in a much needed nap in those comfy hotel beds before heading out to Illinois State for a light practice.
Yet another great choice for dinner was selected… If you didn’t already know, our team LOVES to eat and this was turning out to be the best trip ever! After filling our little tummies up, we proceeded to wait outside of the restaurant for what seemed like hours waiting for our slow eating coaches to finish up their meals. This is where Kait, Steph, and Lauren tried to get cookies from the neighboring hotel. I mean who could blame them though, those cookies are delicious! However, they were highly unsuccessful. The night was concluded with a few goodnight phone calls, facebook stalking, and watching Titanic on TV before going to bed.
We woke up to an urgent text from Krista, telling us to hurry to breakfast, as our previous time of eating at 10am was when it closed. I barely brushed my hair before running downstairs to devour a bowl of cereal. Unfortunately I had a big problem on my hands when I was starting to crave some vanilla yogurt. For those of you who keep up with our Aces on the Road journals, eating yogurt before a game is quite the sin according to our assistant coach Chris Cahill. I unfortunately had to fight off this craving and finish my breakfast with a banana and some orange juice.
We arrived at Illinois State at 12pm and started to prepare for the big game. The game was rough and a lot of calls didn’t go our away. Although we went down three goals, we continued to push through and eventually Bre put one in the back of the net for us. Although we lost 3-1 to the Redbirds I was happy with my team for never letting up. Following the game and a nice shower, we went back onto the bus to enjoy a yummy lunch of sandwiches. Kait won a chocolate milkshake from the trivia question this past week, which everyone was very jealous about. Our five hour bus ride home was just like any other one, slow and uneventful except for watching Bridesmaids. That movie was hilarious!!
The lesson of the week is to work as a unit; team defensive pressure is a must. If we do that and play our possession game, we’ll win games. Four more games left! GO ACES!
Sept. 9 & 11 - At Hilton Garden Inn High Altitude Tournament
From the perspective of senior Sam Conrad
6:00 p.m. Wednesday evening: Everyone was extremely excited to take a trip out to the west coast, and eagerly anticipated our departure time from UE by failing to sleep the night before when we had to leave at 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning. We drove out to Louisville (my pronunciation of this city is apparently different than how its “properly” pronounced) to catch our flight, wearing these absolutely lovely new purple sweatpants and travel jackets. Everyone was a zombie upon arrival at the Louisville airport, literally. Christopher proceeded to eat a parfait contrary to our prohibition from this particular food (Kasey is still bitter about it). The anticipation of traveling farther than Nebraska dwindled as the hours dragged by until we finally, finally landed in Arizona. It was cold that day in Phoenix, with temperatures reaching only 98 degrees. Once everyone had their baggage, our coaches left us in the airport to retrieve the vehicles for the next five days. An hour and half and 20 sweating, sleepy, grumpy and hungry girls later, our coaches finally decided to show up to take us out to eat. After we were all fed and ready to start another 2-hour trip up north, we were taken by surprise and took a detour to pick up our friend and teammate Abby Guerra.
I am unaware of anything that happened in the three other vans, but on the trip up James went camera happy. He was either very tired and needed to keep himself awake, or had never seen mountains with clouds before. After we arrived at the hotel, we proceeded to get lost a couple times on the way to and from practice at the NAU field. Twenty hours later, we were able to rest our eyes with full belly’s and happy thoughts.
Friday morning: We had a light practice, then prepared for our game against Lamar. One hundred ten minutes later, we were walking off the field and heading back to the hotel to hang out with all the west coast families and eat Mr. Harrison’s delicious grilling.
9:45 a.m. Saturday: We awoke from our slumbers and had another light practice to get our legs feeling better and exercised for the game on Sunday. After practice, we went on an adventure (make a note that throughout the ENTIRE trip we would see James in the background snapping photos of anything he laid eyes on). We loaded up the vans and drove 30 miles west of Flagstaff to a small town called Williams, where a tourist site called Bearizona (yes folks, BEARizona) existed. After overwhelming the sandwich shop with 24 people, we headed off to see bears and other exotic (well, for Arizona per say) animals. Two hundred photos and a million laughs later, we headed back to Flagstaff to act like we were going to do homework and eat.
9:00 a.m. Sunday: Breakfast of champions was served thanks to the hotel. This was our last game in Arizona, and we were ready for it. Another 110 minutes later, we came away with a 0-0 draw and positive thoughts as we were making progress (slowly but surely) towards turning our season around and wreaking havoc on other teams. After the game, we turned around and headed back down to Phoenix to stay the night and await our (once again) early flight back to Louisville. At one point Dierkes fell off the van seat and took a little nap on the floor, only awaking to sneak snacks from under Dani’s feet. We were spoiled that night for dinner, receiving authentic tacos from the Guerra household.
What did we take away from this experience? James wants to be a professional photographer. Don’t mess with Chris when he is sleep deprived. Twenty grumpy, hungry, tired soccer players exert extreme sarcasm and perform the silent treatment until one of the three said things is diminished. Fight through pain and don’t let tiredness show. Don’t give up. Do anything to help out our teammates. Play as a unit. Play with pride, heart and determination. Stay positive and composed. HAVE FUN.
Sept. 4 - At Morehead State
From the perspective of junior Danielle Langness
Our trip to Morehead State was a little bit of a rollercoaster ride. We started out stopping in Lexington, KY for lunch Saturday afternoon for subs – a craving Krista doesn’t just have when she’s pregnant. Chris asked for a “real game of football” to be put on the TV and so we watched as Auburn trailed to Utah State. (For anyone who isn’t a committed college football fan, Auburn eventually won). We then continued our journey to Morehead, KY where we were tricked into thinking that we would be staying in a motel, but were pleasantly surprised to see a nice hotel perfectly placed in the middle of nowhere. We unloaded the bus and went to our rooms to get ready for practice. Once at practice, Chris decided to “warm up” with us by putting on long black socks. This wouldn’t have been a big deal – seeing that we wear long socks as soccer players – but Chris had black capris on which overlapped his socks. He was basically blacked-out and the girls proceeded to tell him (and naturally, make fun of) how thug he looked. We had a fun little practice of 1v1 soccer tennis, James’ cone trapping game, and a PK competition. We found out that Dierkes is obviously the worst player at soccer tennis going 0-3, and that Bre can bring the heat when provoked by Tall Tree (Lauren Tiernan). At the end of practice, we were finally brought some water in a fertilizer container.
After a nice morning walk past a retirement home Sunday morning, we got ready for the game against the Morehead State Eeeeaaagggglllleeessssss. The warm up was looking pretty good and Krista told us that if we all left everything we had on the field, she would give us the break we deserved Monday and Tuesday leading up to the Arizona trip. However, we all know that we obviously didn’t leave everything we had on the field Sunday and threw away yet another competitive game. At the end of the day, James left us with some inspiring words to think about.
This is the turning point of our 2011 season. Everything is in the players’ hands now; all we have to do is come together, support each other, and play like the team that showed up Friday night to play Indiana University. We have to play to win, not play to not lose. We are championship material, but we have to prove it at each and every game from here on out.
Aug. 28 - At Valparaiso University
From the perspective of junior Kasey Cartwright
It was yet another eventful weekend for the UE women’s soccer team. We played a hard fought game against Central Michigan on Friday night. Tasha scored a bomb of a goal from 40 yards out and Chavi made numerous saves in both halves. Chris Cahill explained to me that he had consumed a yogurt parfait before the game. This is a forbidden food on our team. Anyway, despite playing 90 intense minutes, we had to be up early on Saturday to travel to Valpo for our game on Sunday. To all of our surprise, we ate at Subway for lunch. (That was sarcasm.) When we arrived in Valpo, we had a light training session which included playing keep away in a small circle. The rules stated that if the surrounding circle got 11 or more passes the two defenders had to stay in the middle another round. Also, if the two defenders were split by a pass, they also had to stay in another round. Everyone abided by the rules until our assistant coach and our student assistant coach were supposed to be the defenders. Somehow, the rules changed and the game was magically over.
After practice, we went back to the hotel to relax before dinner. We feasted on massive amounts of delicious italian food while watching Kevin Hart in the hotel brunch room. Then we watched “a few minutes” of film. After the film session, we all went to bed to get a champion’s rest.
Sunday was a beautiful day. It was sunny and had a slight breeze. Perfect game weather. We battled through both halves with very good looks on the offensive end. Finally, with 1:15 to go on the clock, Steph placed a ball in the upper corner of the goal. We won 1-0. I could not have been happier that we would not be going into overtime.
On the way back to Evansville, we stopped for mexican food. I would not normally think of mexican food as a treat, but this was before I realized how many sandwiches I had eaten in the past three days. Approximately 12. While we were eating, the majority of the team decided it would be a good time to make fun of my Chicago accent. I wasn’t too offended because I know jealously is the best form of flattery.
That pretty much sums up the weekend. We have many games coming up in the next week and a half so attention to detail will be out main focus. GO ACES!
Aug. 22 – Women’s Soccer Golf Scramble
From the perspective of freshman Caitie Dierkes
Our day at the golf course started off pretty slow. We got out of our cars and sat around. We were soon informed that we had to hike across the golf course to place different signs around. We were not given a map… which made our lives very difficult. Luckily for a few of us freshmen, we were picked up by our assistant coaches. We were living the dream as we got to ride around the course and watch our other teammates walk.
This all turned south when we found out what reckless drivers our coaches were. As we came around a corner, the cart sped up and Taylor Brand shot off the back. The worst part was that out coaches kept driving. We had to stop them and wait for Taylor to catch up. She was fine minus a couple good scrapes.
We made it back to the clubhouse alive. We were split into teams to wait at the holes. Luckily I was at hole one with Kasey Cartwright and Colleen Marty, so we didn’t have to walk far. We literally sat in a bush for hours and occasionally got up to watch the golfers at our hole.
The afternoon sun hit and time was passing by so slow. Over the horizon I saw six golf carts heading towards us. The leader of the pack, Olivia Robinson. The golf carts swarmed us and they were yelling slurs. The fleet proceeded to tour the entire golf course at a “leisurely” pace. No rules were broken during this tour.
The golf carts were a great distraction from our growling stomachs. Lunch not included. Later in the day when the hunger was too much to bare, Chris “War Eagle” Cahill made the mistake of giving his credit card to Kasey, Colleen, and I. Kasey, still wounded from the parfait fiasco, took her emotions out on his credit card. After the golf outing we had a delicious dinner (thank goodness) and we thanked the participants. We would like to give a special shout out to the Oak Meadow refreshment lady and the cat lady.
Lesson of the day: Always brown bag a lunch, and golf carts may be the new ATVs.
Additional Note on the golf scramble from Coach Krista McKendree
We were very excited to have our first golf scramble to help support our program. It was a great afternoon at Oak Meadow and we are very appreciative of everyone that took part, either as a player or sponsor. It was a fun gathering and opportunity for us to interact with people from the community and hopefully we’ll be able to continue to build on these relationships.
We’d especially like to thank the following companies…
SWISA, CINTAS, Tenbarge Seed & Turf Supplies, Tornatta Tire, Evansville Soccer Club, Play It Again Sports, Metro Sports Center, McCullough Service Center, Evansville Tile, Husk Signs, Vectren Land Services, Tri-State Orthopaedics, and Oak Meadow Golf Course.
