Thursday, October 11, 2007

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.

1 comment:

byudrdave said...

Thanks for the info. Please keep up the postings. We are in the Sacramento area and were unable to be there for the match with RSL. Our son, Cameron Pettey, is a new freshman on the team, so we're anxious to get reports. He got some playing time, and had a great experience.