Recruiting Wednesday returns. I reached out last month to the current crop of college freshman & sophomores I’ve highlighted on these pages during the past year. I wanted to know what their Spring season is like, to get an idea of what the reality of playing college soccer can be. The always reliable Patrick Carver was kind enough to take time out from his academic and athletic pursuits to provide some background. By the way, that’s Patrick on the far left, back row, in the picture above with his Emory teammates during a visit to upstate New York last October. Thanks Patrick!
The real work for a college soccer team happens in the months before the season actually starts. During the spring semester, teams like mine here at Emory have a chance to play as well as spend serious time in the weight room with our strength and conditioning coaches.
Because Emory is a Division III school and like other D-III schools places a heavy emphasis on academics, the NCAA limits formal team activity to 15 practices and one game. The consensus is that this action was designed to level the playing field for teams who didn’t have the budget to have numerous weeks of practices and play a handful of games. But it has definitely hurt our efforts to get better because we have to work on our own while other schools outside our division can practice much more and are able to play more spring games. To make up for this inequity we are forced to work out a lot on our own. Emory, unfortunately, doesn’t have priority scheduling for athletes, which means we have to schedule with everyone else and don’t have the luxury of working our schedules around practice times. This can make it very difficult to get a large group of people together for unofficial practices.
Aside from these difficulties, however, we have a very competitive spring season. We can divide our 15 practices any way we would like throughout the spring. Our coach has decided to practice three times a week for 5 weeks with our game following the 5th week. We practice Tuesday, Thursday and Friday every week for 2 hours. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we follow practice by going straight to the weight room for lifting. On Fridays, we follow practice with circuit training. Circuit training is a mixture of exercises geared towards improving our conditioning, strength, footwork, agility and speed. This training is similar to the training that Coach Alumbaugh has integrated into the curriculum of Springfield Soccer Club. Our sessions are longer and we do different exercises with a greater emphasis on strength but it is obvious that this type is training is beneficial to soccer player.
On off days most of the team is doing something on their own. The friends I spend the most time with at Emory are all on the soccer team so we usually all go together to train. On off days we do a variety of things including soccer racquetball, road runs, shooting, small-sided games, or footwork. Most people on the team are going to be playing this summer so everyone is staying in shape and working hard. Most of the freshmen will be playing state cup this summer while a lot of the older guys will be playing in the new U-20 division of Super Y League or for one of the PDL teams around the Atlanta area.
Even though we are hurt by not being able to play more games during the spring season we do get to play a very good team for our one official game. We will travel to Furman University in South Carolina for our spring game on Saturday March 25th. Furman is best known for producing US National Team Players Ricardo Clark and Clint Dempsey. Emory actually played Furman when those players were on the team and lost 4-2. Now without two full national team players it should be interesting to see how we compare to a renowned Division 1 team.
Our spring season at Emory is not ideal but still a great time for us to improve. I can already notice improvements from lifting throughout the winter and spending more time with the ball. The off-season has been very demanding thus far but has definitely helped me and teammates make strides in our game. Hopefully, our hard work will reward us with a win against Furman and even bigger things in the future.
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