Hello past, present, and future Panthers, as well as our fans!
We hope you’ve had enjoyable, warm and safe summers all round, because soon enough we will be seeing shorter days and cooler temperatures here in the city of Milwaukee. The season of fall is upon us, but what does that really mean? It means that the UWM men’s soccer team’s season has kicked off and has fired straight into action! A team with huge ambitions, exciting expectations, and 32 passionate young men who fight for each other everyday, along with coaches who drive us to be our very best at each and every training session. No one will want to miss out on the “Nights Under the Lights” this season at Engelmann stadium.
In the past we’ve had former soccer players write up some articles for a blog, which looks to give updates on our Men’s soccer team. Former captain Dustin Ashley’s “Back Line Blog” and Laurie Bell’s “Bell’s Blog,” are a couple that come to mind within the last five years. Personally I think it’s important to have a connection and interact with our fans as much as possible, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to pick up and continue this tradition!
If you don’t know me, my name is Francesco Saporito and I play on the men’s soccer team here at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. A little bit about me: I’m in my Junior year here at UWM, I’m an international student who was born and raised in the great white north of Edmonton Canada, and I major in Kinesiology, which is involved with sports sciences and sport rehabilitation. Some interests of mine other than soccer include travelling and exploring different cultures, playing board games with my family when I’m back home, and hanging out with my buddies, which usually consists of winning each round of Mario Kart against fellow teammates Josh Kaye and Alex Eastman, but that story is for another day.
But enough about me, and let’s rewind about a month ago to a dry, warm, August day where you pass by Engelmann field and can see our team running shuttles across the field, or otherwise known as EuroFits, as our strength and conditioning coach, Matt Holt, loves to call them. He’s another big part of our team’s project behind the scenes that many fail to see, so a special shout out to him because he’s a special individual who works his tail off for all our athlete’s here at UWM. Captain’s training starts, and you see many returning and familiar faces, as well as a large chunk of new faces around the locker room. These days we spent playing small-sided games, running shuttles across the pitch, and a couple team activities off the pitch to get everyone together prior to the real thing come August 8th. There’s also nothing like a good run to Bradford Beach during captain’s training, where you see co-captain Jonathon Stadler sprint off ahead of the group, demanding more from each of us going into preseason.
Finally we hit the first day of official training with Coach Kelderman, Zenoni, and Rey, who many of you fans I’m sure are familiar with. Both Coach Kelderman and Coach Zenoni have entered their sixth year at the helm of our team here at UWM, while Coach Rey is our goalkeeper coach who played with me during my freshmen year here at UWM. Training started off very good, competitive, energetic, and you could see there was eagerness amongst the group. My freshmen year in 2015 we failed to qualify for post-season conference play, and last season we established third in regular season play, but lost out to UIC in overtime of the post-season semi final match. This year, as I mentioned earlier has even higher expectations, and we’re aiming for nothing but higher this season. Our first preseason match saw us take a 2-2 draw away to a team, which appeared in the Sweet Sixteen of the 2016 season, Loyola, where we won in penalty shootout. Our second preseason match featured our first ever “Black and Gold” game where we played an intersquad amongst ourselves. Finally, our third and final preseason match saw us take on another NCAA tournament team from the 2016 season in the University of Dayton, where we won a thrilling 5-3 match. And just like that, a grueling, yet very positive preseason was over.
Finally, this past weekend we opened up the regular season with two home matches against two teams we matched up against last year in Eastern Illinois on Friday night, and Western Illinois on Sunday afternoon. Both were determined to bring their A-game, knowing that we’d come away with victories against both of them last season, but our group was ready for the challenges ahead. Eastern Illinois came with an organized, defensive plan, and were set on making it a frustrating night for us. Regardless, we persevered and we determined to fight for a positive result. With 4 minutes to play, freshmen Henrik Fennefoss, a very flamboyant and deceptive midfielder from Norway, found himself on the end of Nick Anguil-Andriacchi header and bang, just like that, 1-nil up! 3 points, and we looked to go again Sunday afternoon. Come Sunday, we hit a bit of a roadblock against another very defensive set team in Western Illinois. Unfortunately we went down 1-nil very early, but clawed our way back to 1-1 from a very nice finish from freshmen Vuk Latinovich. Another game where shots were highly in our favor, but we couldn’t quite find that second goal and took away a point each. All in all, it was a positive weekend where we were able to find our feet a little and find areas to work on in training, which is exactly what we did leading up to our trip to Evansville this weekend! Excited, hungry, and keen to take away nothing but six points from both matches, don’t forget to tune in to ESPN3 and watch our this Friday night and Sunday afternoon!
Thanks for tuning in!
-Frankie
