First Home Game

It was a fantastic first home game; except for the scoreline. For our home opener, we played at John Hunt in Huntsville against Atlanta FC, losing 4-0 in front of approx. 600 fans. It was great to see people from all parts of our community. We had people from 27 different zip codes, including North Alabama and Tennessee communities. The game coincided with the merging of the two biggest youth clubs here with HSC and Kicks, bringing the feeling of United even closer to our community.

Unfortunately, our boys didn't pull out a victory, but the next day we travelled to Atlanta in the 2nd game of the weekend doubleheader and fought valiantly. It was a very close game with both teams creating good scoring chances. Late in the 2nd half, Atlanta FC scored an unstoppable free kick that went just over our wall and banged in off the near post. We lost 1-0, but we improved tremendously from the night before.

We're now getting ready for our next home game this Saturday in Decatur at Jack Allen.

0-0 Greenville, Awaiting first home game

We travelled Memorial Day weekend to play Performance FC in our second league match and played to a 0-0 draw. The game could have really gone either way with our team controlling all of the first half and creating numerous scoring chances, but failing to put the ball away. Both Barbosa and Padoveze went down in the first half with injuries, leaving our center of midfield a little out of sinc in the 2nd half. Performance created more chances to score than us to start the 2nd half and with about 15 minutes left, Wills took down a Performance player saving a one on one with the keeper. He was rightly shown the red card and we played down a man for the last 15 minutes. They had what looked to be the game winner, but Preston came out to close down the forward.

Now, we have been getting ready for Atlanta FC and our first home game today. The team is well prepared and I feel confident that we can give a great show to our home fans. It's been a real busy week getting all of the logistics for today covered and I feel we'll provide a great soccer experience for all that come to the game.

Red-White Showcase

We played our first annual Red-White Showcase game in Florence, AL, this past Saturday at Veterans Park. The field was very well kept, smooth and flat, with nice bermuda grass. It was a little narrow compared to what we were used to but very similar in width to Atlanta FC's field, so it was good practice for us. For our first event such as this, I was pleased to see a nice crowd in Florence and we look forward to coming back for our summer camp.

The game was a well played game by both sides, creating some very nice scoring opportunities and providing some real excitement with a closely fought game. The White team took an early lead with a beautiful free kick by Igor Popovich, which went right over the wall into the upper corner of the net in the first 15 minutes of the game. The Red team leveled the score in the beginning of the 2nd half off a nice combination play from Jeff Lisea to Alex Padoveze, who powered home his shot. Both teams fought to take the lead again, with Jesus Delgado scoring for the White team off a nice through ball from Julio Rosales, to win the game 2-1 for the White. This gave those guys some bragging rights, plus first seating at Logan's after the game.

I'm looking forward to our upcoming match with Performance FC in Greenville on Sunday and hope to see some of the creative attacking flair that was shown in the Red-White game.

Weekly review

I'm trying to force myself to sit down at least once per week to write down the happenings at RCU. Today is Thursday, 5/15/08, so it's not quite the end of the week, but much is happening and I am once again short on time. We have a new head coach, Greg Petersen, who'll be here on Saturday. To be very plain and in an effort to dispel the various rumors that have been going around town already, I did not see "eye to eye" with the previous coaching staff on various aspects of the team and after various discussions and different options to work in the future, Mike Remus, the initial head coach, and Lincoln Ziyenge, the initial player/asst coach, resigned on Tuesday 5/13. I am sad to see both Mike and Lincoln leaving Rocket City and hoped that they would have stayed with the organization, but I must understand and respect their decision to resign.

Being left with no coaching staff, I decided to immediately pursue a new head coach and found an excellent experienced option in Greg Petersen. I am excited for Rocket City, its players and fans, and the community at large at the arrival of Greg because of the quality of experience and successful coaching record he brings here. I look forward to the future of trying to provide the highest level of soccer experience to our players, fans and community.

We are currently preparing to play our inaugural Red-White game, which will be held in Florence this weekend at Veterans park at 5pm. We will hold this game each year in May in a city away from our normal home and where we will be conducting a summer camp. We have one player, Kirk Childers, who graduated from Florence High; so for him this will be somewhat of a homecoming.

We have also secured our next viewing party on 5/28 at Indigo Joe's for the US-England game. More will follow in future notes about this.

Academy Tryouts

We've announced our Academy tryouts at Point Mallard on 5/28 at 6:30pm and 5/31 at 10am. The Academy is open to high school age boys; applications are available on the website. The Academy will serve as a training ground for these boys that want to play at a higher level after high school. There will be room for a maximum of 36 players ages 14-19. Players will have no cost for the Academy except a tryout application fee of $15. Training will be 1-2 times per week during June and July. Players that perform well will have the chance to train with the NPSL first team.

First NPSL game

I know it's Tuesday and our first game was Saturday. I would have loved to have written a little about our first game right after the game, but in reality, I do a lot more than sit at my computer hacking away at this blog. Needless to say, I have a little time as 3 of my 4 kids are sitting in my tub splashing water all around my bathroom. I figure by the time I'm done writing, I'll have about an inch of water covering the floor.

Too bad for our players and fans. We lost what I thought was a hard fought game that could have gone our way, 2-1. We went up 1-0 at the end of the first half on a penalty kick that was called due to a hand ball by their right back. Atlanta did have more shots than us, but most of them were well off target and the rest Jeffrey Preston easily handled. The second half went very much in Atlanta's favor as we tried to hold our 1-0 advantage, but with about 20 minutes left, we conceded a goal. All our players fought very hard in the game and I was very proud of their effort, but we were unfortunate to concede a second goal on a sloppy play from the back.

Being that this was our first game and a road game playing on fieldturf, the guys played well and I expect to see big improvements in our consistency over the next 2 weeks when we travel to Greenville, SC, to face Performance FC, who beat Atlanta FC on Sunday 2-0 in Greenville.

First Game

Another 3 months have gone by and I haven't entered anything into the history blog. I spent most of Feb/March/April going back and forth to FL for my Infinity Financial Group business. I'll have to sit down and spend some time thinking about what happened the last few months so I can record them for historical purposes.

But for now, I'll jump to the moment. Tomorrow is our first NPSL game at Atlanta FC. We've been looking forward to this since last summer when I first started looking into the NPSL. It's been a ton of work and it feels good to get to this first game. We've still got almost another month until our first home game on 5/31, so we have plenty of work to do to prepare for that.

Hope to have good news to write about after tomorrow's game.