UNA Men’s Club Soccer started the week with their preseason home opener against Mississippi State University.
The match began with a strong defense from Mississippi State, scoring two goals in the first half. Then, North Alabama Club Soccer pulled through with one goal against Mississippi State. The team ended their first home match with a tough loss, 1-5.
Before heading into their next preseason match, against the University of Alabama on Sept. 14, Club Soccer Vice President Zach Boyett expressed how much the team has changed and grown in recent years while he has been involved with the club.
Even with a 1-5 score loss on Sunday, Boyett has hope and is seeking a great season for the team, despite some of the challenges that have slowly been evolving.
Boyett states that one of the biggest challenges he has faced was “getting the name of the club out there, because a lot of people on campus do not know that we even have a men’s soccer team.”
Boyett said that, around campus, it is hard to get fans to stay at games, let alone any club sports.
“If it was publicized more and people knew more about it, and had more of an atmosphere to it, not only would it have more of a fan base, but we could grow more and get more players within the school who have an interest in playing,” he said.
Boyett mentioned checking out their Instagram page, @una_msoccer, would be a big outreach to those new students still interested in playing and helping the team not only grow, but also bring more people to the games to support.
Since the Spring season, this team has almost doubled in size.
“We just had tryouts about a week ago, and this is by far our biggest turnout we have ever had,” Boyett said. “Around 47 people came out, so we are going to roster everybody.”
Despite previous struggles to increase roster and interest rates, club soccer jumped from 22-25 active players on the team to 47. But this strikes a new conversation among the team regarding how they can divide the playing time equally over the fall season.
“We are going to have to make a purple and gold squad for the regular season, because we have so many,” Boyett said. “But we have never had this amount of people before, so there is obviously a lot of talent you can pull in. So we are looking pretty good this year.”
Improvements and hopes are in for the team as they move forward to play Alabama this upcoming Sunday.
“We just got to get a little bit more efficient, not making mistakes, especially in the backfield,” Boyett said. “I think the majority of the goals they scored were off of mistakes and accidents. Overall, I think we were the better team today. I think we look solid and could have easily beat them, but you know, first game jitters, I guess.”
He notices how his team got jitters before and during the match, which could have stopped the club team from their first win, but this does not stop him from wanting to improve the team as a whole.
“Making less mistakes and playing better ball,” he said. “It is no fun to lose ever, but this is preseason, so we got another game against Alabama coming up soon. This will be a really tough game, they are quite good. But when the league starts, we go all out and go undefeated in the regular season. I do not plan to lose once we get there.”
