Changes with the Seasons

So now that I'm back at school my soccer viewing has gone down significantly, except for our school team (Go Beavers!). Also my job as the Sports Editor for our paper takes up most of my time. So from now until I get inspired by the Champions League or some passing remark I will update this with my biweekly column and weekly match reports. Enjoy the flavor of Northwest Iowa soccer!

Support Your Local Side

Fall has come again and for many that means football season is right around the corner. For many colleges and universities the season kicks off on Thursday, with the rest following on Saturday (our boys start the campaign in St Paul against Bethel). In addition both Men’s and Women’s soccer kick their seasons off today at home against York. This is the most exciting time of the year for a sports fan like myself at BV.

Over the summer I spent time with the fans of the Minnesota Thunder soccer team. Let me tell you, those guys and gals know how to give a team some home field advantage. They’d bring drums, horns, flares, smoke grenades, pretty much all of the excitement you see at a European soccer match, or at some big college football games. The tailgating I did with them the more I started to think about what games would be like here in Storm Lake if that same kind of atmosphere could be recreated.

Over the past three years it seems that the atmosphere at all Beaver athletics have taken a backwards slide. Basketball in particular used to be a feared date on the schedule for conference foes. Now it has become just another game due to student apathy and the university’s aversion to anything that could possibly be construed as provocative.

So how can we restore Rollins Stadium, Siebens Fieldhouse, and so on to their former status? One word: participation. Notice I didn’t say attendance. Simply being there is no longer good enough. I’ve been to soccer games at the Athletic Complex that were exponentially louder than football games even though the crowd was a hundred times smaller because the fans were cheering the entire ninety minutes. There is no reason that this passion cannot be replicated at any other sporting event on campus.

We need to give the teams every advantage we can this year. So get out there and cheer, chant, sing, scream, stand up, holler, do whatever you have to do to make he sidelines loud and rowdy. Make it clear to opposing players that they are in a hostile environment…while the game is going on. As soon as the final whistle blows the “Dark Clouds” cheer for both teams. No off field confrontations, no fights, just unabashed support of your local club during the game. We need more supporters and less passive fans. The perfect way to get a taste for this flavor of favoritism will be today at 3pm and 5pm for the soccer home openers.

Rejected!

MLS Reject $1 Million Offer from Celtic for Shalrie Joseph

Another player from New England is pursued by a big European club and once again the offer is turned down, not by the club or player not wanting to complete the deal (as was the case with the $5 million dollar deal to bring Eddie Johnson to Benfica), instead the deal was squashed by the league itself.

While you could argue ad nauseum to the value of Joseph to his team and league as a whole versus the million dollar offer, as well as the $2 million dollar offer by Charlton for Clint Dempsey, it is hard for me to side with the MLS in their decision. I understand that in order to get the league going and keep it competitive in the early stages it was imperative that the league have a hand in transfers, both within and outside of the league. This worked, note the past tense in that statement. The era of the MLS making decisions regarding players transfers should have left when teams were bought up by individual owners. If I were the owner of an MLS club and an offer was turned down by the league without me having a say in it something would hit the fan.

Certain decisions have to be made by the league as a whole, as they affect all of the member clubs, transfers just shouldn’t be one of those.