The Indians started out their season last August with five preseason matches against four year colleges. They played Brewton-Parker College, SCAD, USC Aiken, Newberry and Francis Marion University.
It was a grueling schedule and only one of these matches resulted in a win however on August 25 when the ball was kicked off against Wake Tech for the regular season Salk was ready to post a 1-0 victory. The next day they traveled up to Virginia and beat Patrick Henry 2-1 to start the regular season off with two important Region X wins.
As the season progressed the men brought their A game to a home match vs Spartanburg Methodist and shocked the 2011 Region X champions 3-2. After some ups and downs the Indians got it together at home again on October 17 to avenge an earlier loss to Cape Fear in a wild 4-3 shootout. Patrick Henry came for their return match with the Indians three days later looking for some payback and instead found themselves the victim of a golden goal by Salk’s leading scorer Elijah Ukpong as the match ended 2-1 in favor of the Indians. Hopes were thus high for the post season however the Indians came out on the wrong end of a 1-0 score line in their first playoff game against Florida based Broward College to end their season. “It was a frustrating way to go out,” according to Coach Glass, “the guys played very well but just could not get the ball into the net despite dominating the run of play.”
The Indians will now be looking to reload for 2013 as thirteen players will be graduating including most of the starters. Elijah Ukpong who set the USC Salkehatchie men’s soccer all time record for goals after notching 20 tallies this year along with 6 assists will receive his Associates Degree as will defenders Wayne Preddie, Gino Lucarelli, Danial Hernandez, Nas Mugozi, and Noe Guerrier. Midfielders Jarrell Smalls, Estaban Cobo, Adan Mundo, Tucker Hamilton and Jose Berbessi will also be attending a four year college next year. The team will also lose forwards Robby Bacon and Raul Gallegos to graduation.
“It will be very tough losing all these guys,” said Glass, “we have a great group of freshmen players and they all made a strong contribution to this year’s winning record, however there will be many new faces on the team for 2013 and that means a lot of work getting everyone on the same page with regard to our system and tactics." One thing is for sure about the 2013 squad, they will not want to be the ones to break
the Indians recent streak of winning records.
