Texas Whiners, Smoke Bombs and Snow Shovels

            Fort Lewis Soccer Alumni and assistant coach Brian Fredrick was awoken at 7:15 A.M. on Sunday, Nov. 15^th by a phone call from Ex-Irish National Team player, and Fort Lewis College Head Coach, Ogie Kennedy, “The Pitch Needs Shoveling Brian!”

            “Um…O.K. I’ll get right on it coach.”

Brian wiped the sleep from his eyes and roused groggy alumni from his couches and living room floor and called his brother Benj Fredrick with instructions about removing the frozen white stuff from Dirk’s Field.  Nearly 50 alumni and family and local friends of the program showed up to help with the field preparations.  Many of the former players appeared to be quite taxed, perhaps from their long drives or from the extensive night of jubilant festivities that tends to occur in Durango on the eve of these big games.

We are not really sure why the Fort Lewis Police wouldn’t allow former Captain and first team All-American, and Hall of Fame Defender Luc Cisna onto the playing field with a shovel to help out.  It must have had something to do with a golden smoke-bomb that inadvertently went off in his hand in a game last week and when he started running to go and put the thing out, the cops for some reason thought that he was running from them.  And wouldn’t you know it, the men in black took it all personally.  And so as it goes, the most prominent face in Fort Lewis Soccer history wasn’t allowed to partake in what turned out to be an extremely important factor in the Skyhawk’s huge win over #3 in the country West Texas A&M, and he may not ever again be allowed on FLC campus.

You see, when Coach Kennedy started the gears turning for the field clearing process, he knew that the NCAA rules stated that a tournament game must be postponed or moved to another location if the playing surface is not deemed “safe” to play on..  And Ogie also knew that he was fortunate enough to be coaching in the most intimidating DII soccer location in the country and he didn’t want to surrender that advantage.  At 6, 856’ the air at Fort Lewis College is very thin; teams from low elevations can’t get enough oxygen to their brains, sometimes it can make them go temporarily crazy. Also, the town’s support for the team is tremendous, and with the help of former players from Denver to Albuquerque, Fort Lewis Soccer Fans may be the most involved and most influential soccer fans on this continent.

I’m still a little goaded that Brian didn’t call me because I would have loved to exploit an opportunity to help out one of the most widely talented college soccer teams that I’ve ever seen.  In 1999, the Fort Lewis team that I was a part of was capable for sure, and we ended up losing the national championship game in overtime.  But I must admit that we lacked the composure and ceaseless goal generating prowess of this year’s team. The 2005 National Championship team might rival this year’s Skyhawks in many categories, but in overall organization, mental clarity and team movement, the 09 team is superior, and nearly flawless. 

Of coarse the 2005 season was extremely special and it produced Fort Lewis Soccer’s only NCAA DIV II National Title.  John Cunliff was easily the Nations’s best DII player that year, and Fort Lewis’s obvious go-to-guy.  And while the 09 team’s Euan Percell is one of the countries most prolific goal scorers -and one of the smoothest players I’ve seen- he really can’t be isolated as a primary offensive focus.  The entire 09 team is dangerous and capable of producing terrifying goal scoring waves over opposing defenses.  Tom Settle leads the nation in assists, German player Dimosthenis Kyrmanidis is always threatening and Thomas Hoang has stepped into the starting role after the injury to Keane Hamilton and become a workhorse with a “long bomb” shooting threat.  Even this year’s outside defenders, Kyle Wood, and Sam Morris are constantly getting into dangerous goal scoring situations.  And it’s more than once this year that I’ve heard opposing teams defenses whimper with fear as they grasp futilely for the streaking gold jersey of yet another highly skilled Fort Lewis Defender as he joins yet another intricate attack. 

With the field quite wet and muddy- but completely devoid of snow- confident West Texas players actually put up a very admirable defensive effort in the first half against the nation’s #1 ranked offense in Div II and Div I soccer.  Their valiant effort came in spite of semi-pompous, whining coaches who introduced unnecessary psychological confusion into their own player’s heads when they threatened not to play on the sodden Dirks Field because of the snow.  West Texas players were heard saying things like, “what’s coach complaining about, the field’s fine” and “why is he so afraid of playing these guys?”  It wasn’t the field conditions that frightened the A&M coaches though; I believe that it may have been something else.

An A&M player miss-touched a pass midway through the first half, allowing the ball to run across his body toward the sideline only to step on the ball and watch it squirt from under his foot and out of bounds.  The highly touted West Texas A&M Head coach, Butch Lauffer- who has written several books on coaching winning soccer- was heard crying out loud, “I knew we shouldn’t have played this game today!” 

Somehow the he missed the fact that two teams were required to perform on the same playing surface, and somehow the coaches missed the irony that Fort Lewis’s only loss in the 09 season came at the hands of an early season event where after driving 17 hours to Austin, Texas, they were rudely shuffled about the rainy Lone Star State by Texas Goons.  Their first projected game against St. Edwards was cancelled, and then instead of playing # 9 (at the time) Incarnate Word at a neutral location, they were forced to play the Cardinals in their own stadium where Fort Lewis outplayed the home side, but still lost 2-1.

I had a chance to talk to the West Texas coaches on Friday during FLC’s first round game against School of Mines.  I asked them how their drive was and assistant coach Omar Morales smugly informed me “Oh, we flew in from Texas.” 

That morning, they had beaten Midwestern for the third time this season, just as it appeared that Fort Lewis would beat #10 School of mines for the third time.  I commented on this similarity to Omar, and he replied, “Yes but we don’t have any 12-0 wins in Texas.  The whole conference is strong!” 

It seems that he was implying that FLC has had an easy season with big wins over soft teams like Colorado Christian and first year Mesa State.  He was implying that the RMAC is an inferior conference and that FLC’s national ranking of #1 was misleading.  I’m not sure weather he was trying to convince me- a 32 year-old Alumni in a glimmering Fort Lewis Soccer Kappa Jacket emblazoned with 1998 RMAC Champions Logo- or if he was attempting to convince himself that he might have a slight chance of winning.

As it turned out, he didn’t have a chance.  And in spite of West Texas complaints about the quality of the pitch, Fort Lewis didn’t have any problems passing the ball around beautifully and nearly dominating all possession.  The schooling was enjoyable for me to see after the comments that I had overheard from a few arrogant West Texas players directed toward our fans on Friday, “It will be nice to beat you on your home field!” 

Thanks to beautiful goals from Jennings, Hoang, and Barnd, and fine play from the entire squad, it didn’t go down that way.  And many thanks to the fans who got into the heads of the Texans; one might say that the raucous crowd became a thorn in the A&M players’…leotards.  There were admittedly some tense moments early on, but after Jeff Jennings ripped a low rocket into the right side of the net midway through the first half, Fort Lewis seemed to take over on all fronts. Their clockwork passing then seemed to fall into place as they repeatedly knocked balls up to checking forwards who one-timed passes back to supporting midfielders.  Then the ball would be splayed out wide to flying outside midfielders who whipped in beautiful crosses to the front of the goal.  They outworked, outthought, and outclassed the visiting Buffaloes and the score could easily have been five or six to one.

Hopefully next weekend, the pitch will have dried out some when the defending national champs, Cal St. Dominguez Hills come into town to face the #1 ranked SkyHawks in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Div II National Championship.  Go On Hawks!