My First Goal...

I want to start off by wishing my sister Mo a happy birthday! Gosh you are so old now! I’m just kidding you definitely are not and I hope you have an awesome day!

Since my last update we have had 2 games, winning both. We won our games against South’s and Brisbane City 2-0 and 5-0 respectively.

I think I need to give some of the history of Wolves so people can understand what our games have been like to play in so far. Until 3 years ago Wolves had never won a single trophy usually finishing near the middle of the table in the league. However, since our current coach came to the club 3 years ago we have finished 4^th, 3^rd, and 2^nd in the league and won back-to-back Grand Finals (which is like winning the playoffs). So this year we have seen ourselves go from the hunters to the hunted, meaning we are now getting every team’s best game.

Getting back to our recent games, we were considerably better than both teams, although South’s certainly played very well against us, and all we need is to find that first goal and usually we will end up scoring a bunch. That’s what happened in our game against Brisbane City. I hope that these teams can continue to give us their best effort because it will make us that much better when we play against one of the other top teams in the league.

I am glad that we have been able to score so many goals (11 in 3 games) but what I am most excited about is that we have only conceded 1 goal so far this year. Our defense has been playing very well, and we hope that as we grow more familiar with each other we will be even harder to break down. I was also able to record my first goal of the season, scoring the first, or more importantly the winner, in our game against City. I say finally because I have had 2 headers cleared off the line and gone close with a couple of other headers so far in the season. Although the goal I scored wasn’t a header, it was a shot from the top of the 18 (maybe that will convince my coaches to put me back at forward where I belong, Ha).

Other than my soccer responsibilities I have only had time to go on one adventure in the past two weeks. Steffen, Pat, and I took a ferry to a small island just off the coast and engaged in some sea kayaking. We were able to rent the kayaks rather cheaply and took a trip around the island, which has a lot of beaches, mangroves, and a little bit of coral reef. The kayaking was awesome until the last half hour when we had to fight a stiff breeze to complete our trip around the island, we couldn’t move our arms for days after that adventure.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to nail down a part time job soon so that I have more disposable cash to spend on trips. Until that happens though I am just sticking to soccer and making sure that we continue our hot start to the campaign.

Until next time…

Start of the Season

Hello all,

It has been a little over a week since my last update and a lot has happened since then.

The most important event being the start of the Wolves 2011 campaign, and what a start it was. We beat Capalaba, who are supposed to be one of the top 5 teams in our league, 4-1. The win was significant for a couple of reasons, other than just getting off to a winning start. As a club over the past 3 years Wolves have struggled in the start of the season, usually finding themselves in the bottom 3 or 4 of the league after 5 games. However, we are determined to avoid that this year, and a 4-1 win is a very good beginning (although I am pretty upset we didn’t keep the shutout). W were able to do this while missing 3 impact starters, although Steffen Vroom did come in after 60 minutes and ended up scoring. The guys who did step in and play for our suspended players did very well so we are expecting to have strength in our depth this year, although we are pretty excited to play with our entire first choice squad. You can watch highlights of the game on Thewashingline.com.au just search for Wolves vs. Capalaba in the recent updates.

As for how I played, my distribution was garbage but my defending was pretty good. I need to play significantly better in our next game.

The other exciting thing is that I now have 2 roommates, Steffen Vroom (who played with me at DePaul for four years) and Pat McMahon, who played at UIC and trained with me for the past year and a half. It is really nice having them down here so that we can train together in our spare time, do a little exploring, and just have some guys to hang out with. In fact yesterday we did go on an adventure, traveling down the coast a little ways to Mt. Tamborine…

This trip helped me make some headway on my bucket list! We did a few things while we were up there. The first was a hike that took us through the rainforest and past a pretty cool waterfall (2/3 waterfalls complete). Hiking through the rainforest is a pretty cool experience, because of all the shade it stays cool on the forest floor and only a few shafts of light find their way through the canopy. This yielded some awesome pictures. After completing the hike we walked around a little tourist town with a bunch of gift shops and vineyards/wineries. We then drove around the mountain a little bit stopping at a few lookouts that had great views of Gold Coast and the surrounding countryside. We ended our trip with a stop at the rainforest skywalk (on my bucket list) to do some recon for our next stop on the mountain.

That’s all I have time to write about for now. We have another game this Saturday, so we are preparing to continue the good start to our season.

Hope everyone is well back home!