First Day, Final Season

Wednesday August 27th:

My name is Jimmy McCumber, and I am a senior goalkeeper on the Vassar Men’s Soccer team. This season, my last for the Brewers, I’ll be blogging about my team for our athletics website. First, a quick introduction of our team: we play in the Liberty League along with Union, Hobart, Hamilton, St. Lawrence, Clarkson, Skidmore, and Rensselaer. This is an extremely tough conference, with no weak teams and no easy games, no matter what the year. Last season was the first winning season of my college career, as we finished 7-5-3 overall. However, we again fell short of a top-four league finish and a spot in the playoffs, and were kept out of postseason play completely by the ECAC selection committee. This year we have a brand-new field complex which (though it took an extra year to build) is absolutely beautiful and will be fantastic to play on.

We began preseason this morning with the two-mile run, the centerpiece of our fitness testing. After the two-mile, we went right into scrimmaging. It was good for everyone to get into the swing of things before we start more specific drills. While today was our first official practice, it didn’t really feel like it as everybody got in by Monday, and some earlier than that. It has become a tradition for players on our team to come up a few days earlier for “pre-preseason”- basically a chance for us to practice a bit together before the pressure of tryouts starts. I came up Saturday afternoon and a group of players had already been here for a few days before that, including a few freshmen.

At this point, we have 36 players trying out for 28 spots, which is the largest group we’ve had in my four years here. This is weighing on some players’ minds as our coaches will have to make some very difficult cuts this fall, including some tough decisions they might not have been forced to make the last few years. The upside to this of course is that our team will be much stronger this year because of the heightened competition for spots. We don’t just have 36 players at training, we have 36 solid players, so everyone who eventually makes the team will be prepared to step in at any time. With so much more competition for spots this year, the whole team will be pushed to a higher level and hopefully it will show on the field.