In life, sometimes things won’t go exactly as planned. In sports, that’s almost always the case.
The way this season has played itself out so far for the Oregon men’s club soccer team is no exception to that statement. The Ducks came into the 2011 season highly motivated after suffering a semifinal loss to Weber State in the 2010 regional tournament, a match which ended their postseason. They returned 15 starters from that team, which won the regular season conference championship and had their sights set on Phoenix, home of the 2011 nationals tournament.
Early on in the season everything was going fairly smoothly. The Ducks defeated nonconference rival Boise State 3-1 in their season opener at home. They then managed their way through the first half of their conference schedule and cruised to a 5-0 victory over Southern Oregon in their last match before the regional tournament. But then, as regionals came calling, the ride got bumpy. The Ducks ended their first regional match in a 1-1 draw with the Utah and followed it up with a 1-0 loss to Weber State. They would go on to beat Utah Valley 3-1 in their third match, but still fell short of advancing to nationals by one goal.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Schedule.htm@@
“We started off the year with such high expectations, expecting to go to nationals,” junior midfielder Ian Salisbury said, “But we didn’t live up to those expectations. It was extremely disappointing. But that’s behind us now and we’re doing our best to keep everyone’s hopes up and stay positive.”@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Roster.htm@@
In their first match after regionals, the Ducks bounced back with a 2-0 win over Southern Oregon Nov. 5. After such a disheartening performance in the regional tournament, many teams would have thrown in the towel. But, as junior player-coach Gerald Buxton insists, this isn’t just any team.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Schedule.htm@@
“The attitude of the team has been really good, really positive,” Buxton said. “We still have a lot to play for. Our goal at this point is to finish the season strong and win our conference. We play the University of Portland, our main rival right now, on Saturday and if we beat them then we should be the conference champions again.”@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Schedule.htm@@
Ross Nishio, a defender who is known by many of his teammates as the backbone of the team, shared a similarly optimistic view.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Roster.htm@@
“I felt like we played really well against Weber State; we came closer to beating them than anyone else did,” Nishio said. “Our record shows that we’ve had a slightly disappointing season, but we’ve continued to work hard and we have a lot of young guys playing for us, a lot of young, promising talent.”
Buxton agreed and pointed to freshman midfielder Kelley Thayer as a standout among the youngsters. Apart from winning the conference championship and improving individually and as a team, the Ducks have another goal that they would like to see accomplished: winning the Oregon World Cup tournament. The Oregon World Cup is put on every year by the school’s sports business club and is played on the turf fields on campus.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/uosoccer/Roster.htm@@
Said Buxton, “We know we didn’t win regionals, so we’d like to bring back another trophy along with hopefully another conference championship.”