Soccer Finishes Season in a 2-0 Loss to Wildcats, Needs Work Internally

It's been a long time since the Koeniggratzer March has been played for soccer...and for good reason. Thanks in part to internal divisions on the team (upperclassmen angry at lower classmen getting more playing time and playing certain new players over established players, freshmen thinking they own the campus despite a losing record and thinking they are better than they are...) and that we apparently bought into the hype that we were supposed to win the title after hosting the tournament, ISU finishes far from where we were supposed to be.

ISU finished the season yesterday with a 6-11-2 record (1-5-1 BSC) with Weber State winning 2-0. ISU was outshot 19-7, with Jessie Baddley assisting on one of those goals (to Ari Wood) and taking 7 of her own. Fouls were relatively equal with ISU having 14 to Weber's 13. ISU had 7 saves to Weber's 3, which makes sense because we were getting shot at almost 3 times more than our own shooting output.

I could write more but I'm not going to out of sheer disappointment with the team to not put ego and petty bullshit aside for the greater good, and that it's a lax Saturday night and I have other stuff to write about (midterms are finally over so I can focus more on my blog hyah myaw).

Soccer Loses to Northern Colorado, Shows Complacency

Complacency really DOES come before calamity...look it up, ISU

ISU Soccer lost to Northern Colorado, 3-1 yesterday in what many described as a flat game for the Bengals. Now, I wasn't at the game because I went to be with my rugby boys in a crucial match versus Utah State (which we won after a great second half of play, 22-12, thereby making us 5-0-1 on the season). But I did talk to a lot of people who were at the game, including Bob Devine (ISU Voice Sportswriter and superhuman soccer master), and what happened was all too predicatable considering this year's edition of the Bengals.

ISU tied the game on a Lauren Ryan goal (her first of the season, 7th of her career) and then, as the website describes, we got very complacent and figured Northern Colorado would roll over (because apparently we're SO intimidating with a 5-7-2 record). One small problem: while we decided to let up, the Bears decided to play like...well, a team that doesn't take things for granted. Quoth Feldmarschall Gibson:

"They fought for everything. They ran through everything, they put pressure on us every time we touched the ball. They were playing 100 percent and we were playing 50 percent...When they would get the ball we would react slowly. They would pass it and we would react, as opposed to seeing the play going up and challenging the player for the ball and that's where we were completely off today."

If you want to check the stats of the game, go to the ISU Website hyah. I would cover them here but there is something that needs to be said about what may turn out to be one of the biggest disappointments at ISU this fall.

I came in this fall seeing a soccer team that was to be one of the best in recent memory. This squad was to be the one to win the conference championship, prove the pollsters wrong (again) and was being looked at as the first team to break through and make a run in the NCAA Tournament. And with a lot of freshmen and sophomores on the squad, this was to be the beginning of a long period of Bengal rule over the Big Sky, ruling it with an iron fist and completely under our heels.

Problem: The squad, from what I could gather over the past 2 and a half months, bought into the hype. Every day I would (and still can) hear the team talking and walking as if they had won the whole thing. We entered games thinking all we had to do was show up and teams would roll over (hence why we seem to start flat all the time). And then a funny thing happened when we showed up to games with that attitude: we lost.

We walk with swagger and talk smack everyday around campus. The issue isn't that, it's that we aren't backing it up on the field. A squad who is 5-7-2 overall and 0-1-1 in conference should not be talking smack at all.

What this team needs more than anything is a wake-up call. We have players who give their all every single game. But a handful of people cannot win a game in any sport. We need everyone playing at the highest level. There is no shame in running up the score, or hitting people as hard as we can. There is no shame in yellow cards, and there is no shame in not showing the fake sportsmanship that the NCAA wants you to show just for the sake of image. We need heart, not talent. We need desire, not swagger. We need to live and breathe soccer, not regard it as something to be used for status. We need to have fun again, forget the on and off-field drama and bullshit, buckle down and play the Beautiful Game.

ISU Football: Zamberlin Must Go

Yes, the music is totally appropriate. DO NOT QUESTION JEREMY SOULE

I have remained silent on the Zamberlin employment issue for a long time (out of superhuman loyalty), but now I will come out: Z has to go. I'm going to ride this thing to the end but as an ISU patriot who loves his school to death, we have to let Z go and try to salvage the what's left of the wreckage. We have to save ISU Football from the modern-day reincarnation of Luigi Cadorna, a man who never changes his plans and urges a demoralized army of soldiers forward into entrenched Austrian positions across the Isonzo.

I can remember, when I first came here, how fun the games were and all the people who wore orange and made noise, when Pocatello still had some pride in ISU and when football was competitive. I remember the student section was a fun place to be with everyone donning orange and having a great time. I remember how into the game people got and I recall how hard it was for me to move around because there were so many people who, despite the losing, were having a great time because we were competitive and the games were fun. We heckled other teams and got into shouting matches with opposing fans...in other words, to sum it all up, everything felt like a college environment.

Then, then-Athletic Director Paul Bubb decided to fire Larry Lewis with one year on his contract; fans were tired of losing all these games and we wanted a change. We gave Coach Lewis his buyout so he could chill in the Pressbox and roam around until he found another job (he is now an assistant at Colorado State). A national search was conducted and about a month before my first academic semester (I enrolled academically in Spring 2007; I had begun my ISU game attendance in the fall of 2006), we hired John Zamberlin from Central Washington. The ISU press lauded his ability to recruit locally, his willingness to work with schools with sub-par facilities, and his ability to relate with his players. ISU fans started looking up to a new era of glory, up from the massive disappointment of a 2-9 season when many were eying a deep playoff run. It was a fresh start. I myself was swept away in the enthusiasm, and pledged undying support to the cause because that's what a good fan does. I stood through thick and thin and attacked all critics, and always kept my eyes looking to a bright future.

That was 4 years ago.

Now, Holt Arena lies empty and quiet during games. There may be some rowdiness in the pre-game and the first quarter but by the 2nd quarter it disappears into the air and vanishes, not to be seen or heard again. There is so much room to run through even with the camera crews because nobody is there. The North side, once possessing a sizable fan section, is all but desolate. There is nothing to be had, and only the most loyal and devoted fans show up these days. There is no energy, only a void where pride used to be a long 4 years ago. Those 4 years have seemed like an eternity, a lost age in a way. With the rapid, insane decline of morale and pride, ISU's prospects of ever being relevant in existence are blacker than the uniforms that we now wear.

There is only one option now: we must cut our losses, bite the bullet, and drop the pilot before he crashes us into a mountain. For the greater good, he has to go. For the honor of ISU and future Bengals. We have tolerated enough.