Jaguar Soccer To Play Friendly Match Friday Evening Against JSU
South Alabama women’s soccer team will host Jacksonville State for a friendly match on Friday at The Cage beginning at 7pm.
The Jaguars, after winning the Sun Belt Conference title last season, began their training this week with four days in Gulf Shores to allow the coaches and players to focus on training without the distractions of campus life.
“They’re working extremely hard,” head coach Graham Winkworth stated. “We went away and got everything we wanted achieved: we increased the intensity on our workload while we were away, we managed to train in the heat on a nice, quality field and we became closer as a team. I give us an A-grade in terms of our attitudes. From a playing standpoint, we’re at a C-plus right now and have some work to do, but we are putting the effort in and hopefully by the time we start playing games on a regular basis, we can start getting used to playing with one another. We look like we just met each other a week ago, which we did, but we’re getting there and have a long way to go.”
Winkworth has 12 new faces on the team and, after practicing against each other, he is eager to see how they will match up against another team.
“I want to get some match fitness, but more importantly, just get us used to playing with one another,” Winkworth said. “We just met a week ago and so we’ve had to learn how I want the game played from scratch, so we’re a long way behind where we were this time last year with respect to that. The more we practice and the more we get used to playing with one another, the better it will be. Playing against another team, who we’ve never seen before, gives us an opportunity to see us in that setting because we only carry 22 players and we don’t get to train 11-v-11 very often, so it gives us an opportunity to try a few things out against somebody that hasn’t seen us. Along with that, we have so many new faces it will give them a chance to get their first-game fears and nerves out of the way so they’re a little more relaxed going into the UAB game next week.”
Jacksonville State had a 4-13-2 record last season while going 0-9-1 in the Ohio Valley Conference in head coach Neal Macdonald’s first season. They return eight starters from last years team while adding two transfers from Mississippi State University.
Come out to The Cage to see the 2014 Jaguar Soccer team in action.