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Old North Cup Quarterfinal Draw
We get a home match, but its against the Carolina RailHawks, one of two teams in the NASL, the 2nd tier of American soccer. That won't be until June.
-- At this point we aren't scheduled to play again for another month. I look to add a few friendlies.
March Update
We have a few friendlies scheduled, then the Atlantic Coast Cup starts on March 22nd, and our first two league matches will be on March 28th and March 31st.
-- The board is satisfied with my leadership. My "extremely tight control" over payroll is a positive, the departure of David Campbell is a negative, which is funny because more than once his poor play was singled out in these monthly updates as a concern.
-- We lost $34,090 last month. Financially the team is secure but "It is predicted that the club finances will continue to deteriorate in the coming months." We are gonna be really reliant on cup success.
March 2nd Friendly
We host the Carolina Dynamo, a team from the All-American Premier League, a tier above us (if we promote, we'd promote to the Atlantic Premier League). Whoa. Carolina's head coach is Tony Meola. I haven't heard that name in a long time. I had let some guys play with the reserves just a day ago since we have so much work to do on match fitness still. So my lineup today is mostly dictated around that.
1st Half: We get a nice goal in the 19th minute, we win a header off a goal kick and attack hard up the middle, Roth to Maurer to Shakespeare, he feeds Rose coming in from the left for a goal. Shakespeare tries to clear a corner off the line and fails, own goal, doh. Tied at halftime.
2nd Half: We give up one goal in the second half on a long pass/breakaway, and can't manage anything ourselves.
Wake Forest 1 : 2 Carolina Dynamo
No big deal, we had a lot of young kids out there today.
Injury Update
DL Sean Rongen is hurt in the match today and he will miss 5-6 gmaes.
March 7th Friendly
Not content to just get destroyed once by the Carolina RailHawks later in the Old North Cup, we went ahead and scheduled them in a friendly as well. Obviously I build the entire setup around match fitness and tell the team winning doesn't matter today. Ratzburg actually finds Cooper for a clear cut chance in the 4th minute, a spectacular look, but he whiffs, way wide.
They are outshooting us 13-2 in the 61st minute, Fisher sends a cross in, their entire defense seems to stop and raise their hands wanting offsides, Ratzburg is on the ball and he puts it in!! We do give one back and they tie the match, but we withstand it from there.
In the end they shoot 18 times to our 3, but its fun to preserve a draw against a far better team, even in a friendly.
Wake Forest 1 : 1 Carolina RailHawks
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