Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Xavier's Kaplan Brings A-10 Fans To The NCAA's

The following blog is part of a series of entries written by Xavier Men's Soccer sophomore defender Andy Kaplan as his team enters the NCAA Tournament after winning it's second Atlantic 10 Championship Title.





Selection Show and First Practice

Monday was the selection show. I feel like it would have been slightly more dramatic if we didn’t know that we were in the tournament, but it was still interesting waiting to find out who we were going to play.

Just like last year, a ton of administrative people came out (the AD, our compliance director, the whole academic advising department, etc.) to see where we would end up and our whole team sat in front of a monitor that had the show running.

Unlike last year though, they revealed all of the teams in the beginning of the show, so we found out right away that we are heading to Morgantown, West Virginia. After we got done cheering it sunk in a bit that we were heading back to the same place to play the same team that we played last year. If we beat West Virginia, we get to head down to Maryland, which will be our third top 10 opponent of the season, and definitely an incredible experience, but first we have to focus on West Virginia.

Tuesday, we had our first practice after the 290-minute plus tournament weekend. People went out yesterday and jogged and stretched for recovery, the legs were a little bit heavy. To compensate, we had a relatively light practice. We were told after practice that we were going to be recognized at the basketball game, but some of the older guys on the team talked to coach and convinced him to hold off on that.

We’ve been out of town for three days in three out of the past four weeks, so everybody’s got more than a bit of work and sleep to catch up on. Other than that, we’re just getting packed and prepared to head out to WVU on Wednesday.

-Andy


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