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.