Columnist Nick Green has written 100 Percent Soccer
since 2005. A
native of England, he began writing about soccer in
the mid-1980s and in 2000 permanently exchanged a seat
in the stands for one in
the press box. He lives six miles from Carson's Home
Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas
USA and the training headquarters for U.S. Soccer.
Married to a long-suffering soccer widow, he has a cat
named Pele.Kyle Nakazawa, Road Trip
Despite what it says below Kyle's picture, this is his second post:
This weekend we traveled to Omaha, Nebraska to play Creighton on Saturday night.
We arrived on Friday afternoon to get in a short training session in Creighton's state-of-the-art college soccer stadium. The stadium resembled a first division English soccer stadium but was equipped with field turf. Fortunately, the majority of our team had prior experience on the surface, so playing a game on it was not too unfamiliar.
The game against Creighton was a memorable one. We set our opponent’s attendance record for the second time in just two weeks (we did the same at Indiana), and we played before a crowd of nearly 6,000 loud spectators.
The atmosphere was amazing as we battled Creighton for 110 minutes. We nearly clinched the win with minutes left in the game when we had a corner. We managed to hit the crossbar twice and the post once in the exact same play. What luck! Well, the game concluded in a draw, and we left for home the following day.
This week we have been preparing for this weekend's games against Ohio State and Penn State. Come check us out on Friday night. Go Bruins!
UCLA plays at 7 o'clock tonight against No. 14-ranked Ohio State (3-0-1) and 2 p.m. Sunday against Penn State. Both games are at Drake Stadium.
Comments
Nice post! The Creighton stadium is great and right downtown, but what is up with fieldturf? Just a ridiculous decision to install that junk. Good luck this year - enjoyed watching your team in the college playoffs last year in St. Louis.
Posted by: Alex | September 16, 2007 8:18 AM