(Oct. 4, 2006) ? My beloved friends, it has been quite a while since we last communicated and honestly I sure miss it a lot. I want to start out today by allowing you all to know that I am working hard find a way to have some of my loyal readers give me some feedback as well as chance to ask questions. It will be like a “letters to the editor” kind of thing, except it is comments and criticism straight to me.
I am definitely hoping that it will be ready for the next blog and can't wait to see if anyone writes back. I strongly believe that for the blog to be a full experience there needs to be some feedback from those who take the time to read it. With all of that said, let's get started on the latest news.
The past few weeks have not been exactly what our team had in mind. Losing 2-1 to DePaul and 1-0 to Rutgers has put us in a tough situation in the Big East and for the season in general. Our performances lately have not been even close to the capabilities of our team and we are all very disappointed in ourselves by the way we have been representing our program. However, I have the feeling that this is it! The sad part is that there are only a few weeks left until the end of regular season. The most exciting part is that with a few games left, our faces are against the walls (like a kid in timeout) and that only leaves room for improvement.
Our team strongly believes in the positives of every experience, and we all have the intention of turning things around immediately. When I say immediately I not only speak of our upcoming game against FAU, but I refer more to what we have to do to fix what's wrong first. The way to do this is by training hard today and everyday from now on. The thing about team sports that excites me the most is that to get things on track, once again, every individual must commit to a plan and with our team, it is such an amazing phenomenon. Why, you may ask? Well, our team is composed of all different cultures, backgrounds, languages and characters. To be a part of this team when all these differences come together for a same cause, gives me the shivers. Diversity is amazing, even more spectacular when diversity is no longer differences between one another; it's more like an opportunity to prove how strong a group can be from learning from one another's attributes and mistakes. Sometimes conflicts take time to be resolved, however all conflicts can be solvable, but that is only if you are willing to put all dedication into a solution to the problem. The conflict with our team in the past (by past I mean every day before today) took this long to be resolved, but like Kanye West says “better late than never”. I am very confident that our team is willing to put it all aside and focus on nothing but one thing, Florida Atlantic University on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006 at 7:30 p.m. and THAT IS IT!!
I live soccer, no lie. But, as every other human being, I need other hobbies in my life. One of my favorite pasttimes is supporting our other athletic programs here at the University, GO BULLS! This past weekend I was fortunate enough to catch some of our other wonderful sports in action. I'll start off with the lovely volleyball ladies. I am so proud of the volleyball team this year. They have really turned things around for themselves. Some of my teammates and I were at the last two home games at the Corral. It was an exciting experience. The games also give me a chance to be my normal self; loud and obnoxious. If you do not believe me, than you will have to be at the next volleyball home game as I will be supporting the ladies toward another valuable victory. Despite the unfortunate losses to all of our athletic programs this past weekend, I am proud to say I am a BULL by the way the football, volleyball and women's soccer programs have performed this year so far. Congratulations to all of USF's student-athletes.
On a personal note, my life has taken a sudden shift into fifth gear, which is the highest, correct? Ha ha. I am very fortunate to still be very healthy and alive of course, but also to announce to all that I will be taking part in an upcoming event with the U.S. U-20 National Team. The event will take place the days of Oct. 8-12, in which we will be facing Haiti's U-23 squad on Wednesday, Oct. 11 in Ft. Lauderdale. This event means a lot to me for the reason that it will be a reunion between a lot of my old teammates from past national teams and myself. Young stars such as Freddy Adu, Danny Szetela and a bunch more, will be attending this camp. To take part in training and to be a teammate with all of the professional players is something that is truly overwhelming. I mean Freddy Adu, he is the face of U.S. soccer around the globe, and I will be chilling with him. Ha ha.
Finally, I will like to acknowledge a few people who have given me a little kick in the butt and have motivated me in some down times in the past weeks. Of course my teammates, I feel sometimes we do not recognize how influential each of us is to one another or take one another for granted, but at the end of the day they are people who make a huge difference in my life. To the man who is responsible for the most amazing smell of hot dogs and chicken on my walk into the stadium, yes you, the one that is always next to the keg!! Ha ha. Seriously, everyone needs to have some of his grill at one point in their lives. To my family, friends, coaches and even animals, God bless you all! This last appreciation is to a few people who I doubt read this, however without them I would be a bum. To my teachers, thank you so much for understanding the life of student-athletes and working with all of us on making us better students without putting our sport in jeopardy. A special happy birthday to my brother, I wish you the best one and may all your dreams come true kid!! I pray that God gives all happiness, health ..... and wealth of course. Ha ha.
(Sept. 20, 2006) ? Man, I tell you, the “lows” in a student-athletes' career are very tough things to deal with. No matter how perfect something might look, there will always seems to be the “lows”. However, the way in which you motivate yourself to be ready to give 110% again, proves to be the guide to gaining respect and being triumphant. This past weekend we wrapped up two games here at home against conference rivals West Virginia and Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, we tied WVU, 2-2, and Pitt, 1-1. I could swear luck is not been on our side lately. This upcoming week will be the turnaround point. We can either become the best team we can be, or we can take the negative way. Injuries are hunting our team, we have a bunch of guys suffering from injuries. Plus, the rest of the team is beat up and constantly trying to regain our legs for the upcoming days. I personally do not wish any injury upon anyone, I have dealt with a few myself and I fully understand the pain that any passionate athlete will go through. At this point, we are beginning to get deep into the season and cannot afford the mental drain of not having certain guys in the lineup. We are taking THE positive way and we are figuring out what the best moves are to effectively fill in the pieces to our puzzle. We have good depth to our team and there are opportunities at the door for whoever is willing to take them. On our team there is one thing that we all agreed upon and that is positive energy all around. The positive of injuries is the fact that there are guys on the team that have been fighting for a chance to play and now the chance is there.
We are traveling at the end of the week, heading to Villanova. The funny thing about sports is that you are never really sure about what is going to happen in a match. We know Villanova is 0-4 in conference play. We also know that they are in desperate need for a win and we are the team that they are aiming to earn that victory against. With that being said, it makes this game an even contest because both teams will be looking to get a win. The game this weekend is going to be a full-out battle, and I must say I am looking forward to traveling and coming home happy.
All soccer aside, let's talk about some fun stuff. School has starting to develop a little and it feels good once you have school figured out well enough to have fun while learning. I am almost sure I have A.D.D because I can never focus on what the teacher says quite well. Probably because I can barely speak English HA HA HA. I would like to congratulate Sammy Castellanos for his goal on Sunday. The special thing about the goal is that it was for his father, who was kind enough to fly down from Philadelphia and give a few of us some words of advice. It is so satisfying for me when I see people's parents be such good supporters not only to their kids, but also to those who are willing to take some advice. I have always looked at such people with charisma and respect. Those people meant the world to me when I was younger - not have my parents with me to be supportive. It was a blessing and like a flashback with Mr. Castellanos this past weekend. It was cool. My mother also came up to see me this weekend. I am disappointed with my performance on Sunday, and it was one of the few times my mother has been to a soccer game. It still meant a lot to me to see her and to have her bring some awesome arepas from my hometown. Arepas are a Colombian food, usually made for breakfast, but I love them so much that I eat them at all times of the day. Thank you mother! Well, I am done for today my people. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. A wish of happiness, love, and respect to you all.
(Sept. 9, 2006) ? This time we did it! Playing Notre Dame at their place was something I never had experienced before. I'll start off saying that Notre Dame Football is a big deal there, I mean it is something very important to their fans. It was amazing seeing the amount of people that headed to the football PEP RALLY. It seemed that the rally attracted more people then a Major League Soccer final. I was impressed at the amount of support their fans showed when it came to athletics. As you already know, we won the game 2-0. I must say our team looked much better than in the past few weeks. Also, a few individuals deserve a lot of credit towards last night's win, including Dane Brenner, Kareem Smith, Yohance Marshall, Simon Schoendorf, and Jordan Seabrook. Of course it took the entire team to achieve this victory, but these guys were important factor in getting out of there with a positive result. Up next we have Marquette at their place.
For now we are at an awesome hotel somewhere in Wisconsin. We have training pretty soon. We need make sure we do the proper things needed to help our bodies prepared for tomorrow's match. I would say that after last night's victory over Notre Dame, we seem to be pretty confident and relaxed for our upcoming games. I believe the team needed this win to get a little more comfortable with each other. Comfort and confidence are very important for teams, as this allows for all individuals to trust each other and get all the pieces to the puzzle together on the field. With that said, Marquette will have their hands full when we step on that field tomorrow afternoon.
This week a number of great things have happened to all individuals on our team. I will start by announcing that Coach Kiefer's twin boys were born on the 6th of September, and they are both very healthy. This week we also integrated a new member to our team, Francisco (Aristeguieta). He comes straight from Venezuela and speaks English with a very heavy accent; it is one of those accents the ladies like. The best news I have for everyone this week is that now all of you have a chance to view Marc Doherty's “crazy legs” via the internet. All you have to do is go to www.youtube.com and search for Marc Doherty, and I promise you a laugh. This week our team will like to have prayers go out to Alex Muniz and his family. His father underwent open heart
surgery and he did not travel with the team this weekend. Alex, our team wishes you and your family the best and we pray for your father's health.
Finally, there are a lot things going through my head right now. I can't wait for the day to see my family once again. It has been so long since I have spent quality time with anyone in my family. My father is in Colombia with the entire family and I cannot express how much I miss them. As for my mother, sister, and brother, I just hope they are all well and healthy. These three individuals are so important in my life and I just wish I can see them everyday. I don't know what to do with myself in terms of soccer, I feel like I am not improving as a soccer player, and worse off, I feel I am not going to be reaching a higher level. Everyone keeps telling me “be patient and relax, it will all come to you”, but the truth is that as much as people want to help me, and I truly appreciate them, they have no clue what I am going through and how difficult it is. I don't think my performances are not as good as before because of my knee, because my knee is awesome, I just feel different mentally when I play nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I love this sport and I am very grateful of the talents God provided me with, but there is something missing. Please forgive the fact that I am not being the Rigo everyone is used to, happy and filled with positive energy. Athletes go through ups and downs all the time. Obviously right now I am very down. Everything with my exterior is going great, the team is winning, I feel very healthy, and my family is all well. It is something in the interior of my head that is going wrong; I just have not been able to put my finger on it. Until next time I truly wish all of you the best fun and health ever. May love, respect, and happiness follow you everywhere.
(Sept. 1, 2006) ? The only way to start this is by acknowledging those individuals who have taken time out of their lives to bring our team joy. We are very grateful for Jessica, who has been kind enough to be our “team mom” throughout the past two seasons. Last year, she provided us with goodie bags before every home game. This year, she has gone out of her way to make our team unique shirts and decorate our locker room before games ? She is AWESOME.
Jessica, from our team: Thank you and God bless your heart.
I know, I know, disappointing performance Sunday at our home opener. It was a mess. However, a mess is temporary as long as it is cleaned up. The night started out great for our team, up 1-0 as we absolutely dominated the match. Everything went down the drain pretty quickly after a red card was issued to one of our most important players (Yohance Marshall). It worsened when Fordham was given - and by “given” I mean exactly what given means - a penalty kick for an absurd “foul”. If you were able to make the game (2-1 loss), I ask you to be patient with our team. Come out to our next home game (Sept. 15). Things will be different.
As for right now, our team is on a plane on our way to Durham, N.C. We understand how important every game from now on is and we are here for nothing but work this weekend. We all have put a little extra into training, following after our loss to Fordham. The guys have been very committed to getting our team back on track and fix the mistakes we made. We have N.C State this Friday and that is all that we need to focus on right now. It will be a very tough match, especially realizing how damaging a loss can be to our program at this point. I am a bad loser, however I understand that when the team losses the most important thing is to make sure we learn from it and get back on top of things. Having said that, our main focus is making sure we come together as a team and fight as a family for the success of our season.
Finally, the part of the blog I am sure a lot of our readers enjoy the most, “the backstage pass to our team.” First of all, thank you for being supportive enough to read though this. I will start off by giving you guys the “shameful story of the week”. I am embarrassed to say this time it happened to me on the road as we were headed to Miami for our first game of the season. Hunter West offered me a sip of his Gatorade, however I was sick at the time and thought it would be wise of me to keep my mouth off the top to for the sake of his health. I DID realize that the bus was moving, too much for me not to spill if I did not want to put my lips on bottle. HERE IS THE GENIUS PART. So, I wrapped my fingers around the top and sipped a little. Guess what I found out at that moment? Liquid fits through cracks! That was about how far my white team polo made it for the weekend. And the worse part, I spilled more on my shirt than in my mouth. I'M SO ASHAMED! Now it's time to recognize those who were unique on the team this past week. Marc Doherty's “crazy legs dance” is something to completely get anyone out a bad mood and into the best groove of their life; I am telling you it is HILARIOUS! Next time you happen to see Diego Restrepo, visualize Ricky Martin, I swear they look like twins and they are both “Living La Vida Loca”. I must say, I wish he was as good in video games as he is in real life. He needs a lot of practice if he wants to have a chance on beating the FIFA kings, Joey Brown and myself.
To end, I would like to leave you all in a serious note. Our team asks for you to keep our head coach George Kiefer and his family in your prayers this week. His wife is due at any time to have twin boys and I can only imagine the pain and stress they are going through. Also, we would like to thank our coaches and their families for dedicating their time and heart to our program, day in and day out. Finally, to our fans, we are getting back on track and hope you all support us and show us love. I wish love and happiness to all. Have a wonderful week.
(Aug. 25, 2006) ? The season is right around the corner and our team is ready for the challenge. The team is absolutely dedicated this year on making sure we focus every day like there is no tomorrow. Preseason has rewarded our “family” with the right preparation and concentration needed for the season opener at Florida International University. The nation has big expectations on our team this year, however preseason honors mean absolutely nothing. It is the post-season appearances that we work for. Of course winning the BIG EAST title and making a Final Four appearance in this year's College Cup is something every individual on our squad dreams of. But, we all share one thing, the knowledge that to achieve these dreams, we need produce a large amount of dedication and passion on a daily basis. Having said that, our main focus is taking the first step and getting the results at FIU.
Today we all must experience “the hatred of traveling”, especially on a bus, and did I mention four and a half hours? It is hard to find something to do on the bus. Most of the guys kill time playing cards. Dane Brenner, Blake Sharpe and Kevon Neaves are usually the ones involved. If the rest are not sleeping then they are making fun of each other and having a good time. Oh, and of course there are the sleepers. But, to be honest that mainly consists of one person, my man Kris Raad a.k.a. Raady Raad. As for myself, I usually spend the time talking on the phone or sending text messages. I know most people think it is a girly thing to do, but it is actually something I get a lot of joy out of. Traveling is somewhat exciting, I guess. If you take away the hours spent getting to out destination. Truthfully, the best part of traveling is the moment we get back home.
So I was asked to write about what is going through my head and give a little bit on what's going on my life right now, therefore I hope you are ready to experience the thoughts in my head. To start off I would like to clarify that my knee is feeling extremely well, and I am very content with the job our trainer Brian Simerville and Dr. David Leffers did with me. I owe them both a huge thanks for helping me back on my feet in such good time. Also, all my teammates, coaching staff, friends and family members deserve a blessing from God for the psychological and emotional support they have offered me every day since I tore my ACL. I am back on my feet and ready to be a part of the success of our team. As for all the preseason awards that have been handed to me, WOW! Honestly, I did not expect anything this year and to have been awarded with so many honors makes me one happy and overwhelmed soccer player. However, at the same time, I feel cheated, not for myself, but for all the amazing players on this team. There is only one trophy I truly wish for and that is the NCAA Championship Trophy.
Well, that is about it for today. Our team will continue to work hard to bring smiles to the faces of our dedicated fans and to represent of our wonderful university. Make sure to come out to the USF Soccer Stadium and enjoy the games. They are very exciting. Until next time .... Much love, respect and happiness.
