Long Trip to Florida

Let me start by saying that when you stay in 3 different hotels in 3 days, it is hard to remember your room number.

I love taking the team to Florida every year to play conference opponents, and I hate playing in Florida. It is so difficult to play in Florida in October. We are just not used to that heat and humidity. We had unseasonably warm temperatures in Nashville before we left on Thursday. It was 85 degrees or so, but it still did not prepare us for Florida. I played college soccer in Miami at Barry University. I never lost a home game in 4 years during the regular season. We tied UCF and lost in the national championship game at home but we won all the others.

We have had a dry spell when it comes to scoring. We have given up 3 goals in our last 5 games. That should be enough to be 5-0 or at least 4-1. We are 2-2-1 in those 5 games. We need to score goals, and we worked on creating and finishing chances this past week in preparation for Stetson and Florida Gulf Coast.

They did not come exactly how we drew them up on the board, but it was nice to be up 1-0 in the first 4 minutes and 2-0 in the 33rd minute of the Stetson game. A couple of freshmen - Jamie Loftis and Gretchen Sutch were in the right place at the right time to take advantage of two Stetson defensive errors. Although we allowed a goal in the last 5 minutes of the first half, we held on to win 2-1.

It was a long drive on Saturday to Fort Myers. We were supposed to get to Florida Gulf Coast at 3:00 to watch our volleyball team play, but an accident on I-4 got us hung up in traffic for an additional 2 hours. We took the team to Fort Myers beach as the sun was setting. We had dinner with an ocean view.

On Sunday, against Florida Gulf Coast, our midfield put together one of their best games and the team played well. We couldn't get one to go in the goal, and we lost 1-0. It is our 5th 1-0 loss. We are not using our high forwards effectively, and we are going to address that in training next week.

It sure would be nice to have a spot in the conference tournament wrapped up by now. The players are feeling the pressure of school work (midterms). We will be hosting about a dozen recruits next weekend. This is the time of year that people start getting sick. We all have to catch up on our rest after the 14 hour bus ride back home Sunday. Needing a win or two next weekend just adds to the pressure.