Club soccer available to GC&SU men

What team at Georgia College & State University plays Auburn, Vanderbilt, and Georgia Southern? The men’s club soccer team.

“We play teams that other teams at GC&SU do not or could not play ,” said junior Daniel Manget.

The program began two years ago, and it is rather simple to explain how it got started.

“A bunch of guys just got together and thought there should be a soccer team at GC&SU,” said captain Ben Parker

Many of the players played in high school and missed the sport when they came to GC&SU.

“I missed the sense of competition, and intramural soccer could not feed my hunger,” said Manget.

So far this season, the team barely lost its first game to Georgia Southern by a score of 2-1. The next test for the club team will be a weekend tournament in Nashville, Tenn. Sept. 24-25. The club team will be playing Auburn University and Vanderbilt University at the tournament.

The players are pumped to be playing competitive soccer and are having a blast on the field.

“I am loving it, even the practices are fun. It is just a bunch great guys playing soccer,” said junior Trey Sutter.

Getting the team started was the difficult part. Each member of the team had to raise $150 to fund the team. The team plans to do several fund-raisers to keep the team well-funded. After tons of paperwork the team was named a club team.

“It took a lot of commitment to get the program started,” Parker said.

The club team was unable to become a varsity program because there has to be an even number of men’s and women’s teams. Right now, GC&SU has six men’s and six women’s sports teams.

The team plays in the Southeastern Collegiate Soccer League, which features teams such as Auburn, Georgia and Vanderbilt. The team’s goal is to have a .500 record in the division.

“The best part about this team is this is our first year playing and we are going to beat teams that have been around for 50 years,” said Manget.

The team is excited about the upcoming season and is confident they will do well. The players have been preparing for this season all summer. All of them have been conditioning in many different ways.

“I conditioned by mountain climbing this summer, so I could work my lungs,” Manget said.

The team has a lot of depth and passion for the game.

“We have developed a good core of committed players,” said Parker.

The players came together quickly and developed great chemistry, which is very significant in how they play.

“For us to win, we need to be able to come together as a team,” said Parker. “We need to be 11 people as a team, not 11 individuals.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 24 2004. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry