Q: Coach Glass, your teams have come out and fought hard early in the season. Your men have earned two ties and the women one, what are you trying to get the teams to understand to turn the ties into wins?
A: In soccer a tie is a good result especially against a strong opponent, so I am not overly concerned about ties.
Still
both the men and the women need to score more goals and the men’s team
has been working on scoring by patiently building up our attacks,
establishing possession on the final third of the field and then looking
for combination passes in the penalty box. The men are getting better
at sustaining attacks in this manner and this weekend scored two goals
in our match with Patrick Henry. For the
women it just seems that we are throwing away scoring opportunities by
rushing our shots and the ladies need to just be calmer in front of the
net.
Q: On the women's side, sophomore Elle Shelton went down with an injury on Saturday, how bad is it? Do you have any injury's on the men's side?
A: Elle Shelton dislocated her knee against Faulkner, the severity of the injury will not be known until she is evaluated by a specialist. I do not expect her back for several weeks if at all this season. Other than Elle we just have the normal war wounds to deal with on the women’s side. For the men I am concerned about a knee injury sustained by Mamadou Ka at Patrick Henry, this injury will be evaluated this afternoon.
Q: You beat USC Aiken on the men's side already this year, do you expect this 2013 edition of the men's team to be special?
A: Our men’s win against USC Aiken needs to be put in perspective. USCA had just begun training 5 days beforehand while we had been in camp for twice that amount of time. We had our entire team on hand for the match while they were still waiting for several of their key players to report in. Also we expect to match up fairly well with an NCAA D-II based on the fact that many of our players are at the D-II level as demonstrated by the fact that many of them play at that level or above after leaving here. As to whether this 2013 version of the Indian’s men’s soccer team is any more special than other teams we have fielded recently I don’t think so. Our men have been consistently posting winning records in recent years. Last year our men’s team had one of the best records in Region X finishing third in the region behind Louisburg and Spartanburg Methodist. I expect that we will once again be competitive in the region but will certainly have our hands full with Louisburg and Spartanburg Methodist once again. Still the premise of your question is good. Fielding a competitive team is very, very special. In fact sometimes it seems to me that it is somewhat miraculous the way our men’s teams have come together in recent years. Especially considering that most of my recruiting time is spent on the women’s side.
A: Louisburg had the number one women’s team in the region last year and the number one men’s team in the region. Both squads advanced to the national tournament and so we expect them to come in here and present us with a major test on Saturday. I expect our men’s and women’s team to meet this challenge by energetically working to execute our offensive and defensive tactics from beginning to end. In this manner we will strive to take our opponents out of their rhythm and disrupt their game plan.
Q: Coach one last thing, what can fans expect the rest of the season from the men's and women's squads?
A: For the rest of the season I expect our women’s team to keep making progress and to work hard in every match to get a result. For the men I expect them to live up to the success recent editions of the team have had and to finish out 2013 with a record that they can be proud of.
