More From the RSL-BYU Game

This time of year, it's hard to get a good picture without better equipment than my son was using, but I did like this picture of RSL taking the field at the beginning of the game. Hopefully we'll get some better pictures at next week's game against UVSC.

RSL-BYU Friendly

“We’re on the march with Watkin’s army …”, 850 BYU and RSL fans showed up to cheer for the two teams in last night’s friendly. A lot of the fans were faced with the tough choice of which team to root for. A small pocket of RCB fans were there with RSL flags, but were on their best behavior noting that “We don’t want to get kicked out of the game in the first ten minutes.”

There was a lot of friendly banter between the RCB contigent and the BYU fans, and the same feeling seemed to be present on the field. It was a friendly that lived up to its name, with no cards issued and very few fouls.

RSL came out on top on two goals by Yura Movsisyan (one in the 14th minute and the other in the 53rd). RSL played a number of regular starters along with several bench players, while a number of new faces were on the field for BYU to go with some of their familiar faces.

BYU’s Coach Watkins didn’t seem too put out by his team’s loss to RSL, saying:

It was a great opportunity for our young guys to get out there and to learn quickly. ... We looked a little disorganized out there, but we’ve only had five practices so far this fall. We’ll get better, back to where we were during the season.

One of the new BYU players getting time in the game was freshman, Derek Taylor. He called it a fun game, and added that he grew a lot as a player in facing a professional team. Taylor also talked about the big difference in facing RSL, “It was definitely an adjustment for me because everything was a lot faster in tonight’s game than what I’m used to as a player back home.”

BYU plays again on Tuesday, Oct. 16th when they welcome the UVSC men’s soccer team to the South Field for a friendly match. See you there.

BYU Friendly in the rain

My son and I tried to go to the UVSC @ BYU friendly tonight. Instead of the game, we got some lessons in the realities of PDL soccer.

The game itself was cancelled. I had a chance to talk to a couple of team representatives about the reasons. It turned out that there were two big reasons:

1. To protect the field: BYU is hosting a tournament on the field and with the bad weather they were concerned about it’s condition with an extra game
2. Finances: The soccer team needs to pay for their use of the field, and with the poor weather, they didn’t expect to draw a large enough crowd to cover their costs.

Since the UVSC mens team wasn’t there, BYU decided to hold an open, intra-squad scrimmage on their practice field. Between players who were on the roster in 2007 and some of the other players who are eyeing spots in 2008, they were able to field a full 11 on 11 scrimmage with several substitutions.

Even with the cancellation, there were about 50 fans there in the cold and wet. They were mostly family and friends of players, something that’s pretty common at BYU games anyway.

The scrimmage itself was a lot of fun to watch. We were right on the field (standing on the sidelines mingling with the team). While we were there, we had a chance to talk to Zach DeFrancis’brother juke the goal keeper, and put a great header into goal.

The game against UVSC is being rescheduled for Tuesday the 16th, and BYU is playing a friendly against RSL this week, so it looks like I’ll have a couple more chances to watch the Cougars play this month.