Off the Pitch with Coach Ray Reid: Jan. 14, 2008
 

Complete Archive

It has been awhile since our final blog, so I thought I would update you on what has been going on.

Chukwudi Chijindu, Julius James and Ryan Cordeiro all graduated December 2007. All three young men obtained their bachelors degree in 3 ½ years.

O’Brian White was the winner of the prestigious Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Award on Friday, January 11, in St. Louis, Missouri. This award is presented to the top male player in the 2007 collegiate season. O’Brian joins Joseph M. Morrone (1980) and Chris Gbandi (2000) as the third Husky to win this prestigious award. Also, O’Brian will receive the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s Male Players of the year award on Saturday, January 19th in Baltimore, Maryland. Finally, O’Brian was also named the Soccer America Player of the Year.

Julius James and Ryan Cordeiro both participated in the MLS Combine at Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida January 12 – 15th. They are also eligible to be selected in the MLS Draft this Friday, January 18th in Baltimore, Maryland. The draft will be shown live at 2:00 PM on ESPN2. We hope that you can tune in and watch these two young men be selected.

O’Brian’s award is quite a testament to our team. The players in our program all work together to succeed. If not for his teammates, OB would have not been in the position he was, to be successful this year. It is an all for one and one for all mentally at our program.

Also, not to be forgotten should be Michael Pezza, who led the country with 19 assists. Mike is an outstanding player who has a great future at UConn and was very instrumental in our success this fall.

We will start classes on January 22nd and will immediately begin training. Dori Arad, Oscar Castillo, Josh Ford, Greg King, Pezza, Akeem Priestley, Karl Schilling, Toni Stahl, Kwame Watson-Siriboe and White are among the players that want to atone for last season’s disappointing quarterfinal departure. We can’t wait to get started.

Finally, we have an email list that we email informational updates on our team and program to the public periodically. If you would like to be included in these frequent emails, please email Maria Murray at Maria.Murray@uconn.edu. Please include your name, home mailing address and email address. We will then add you to the list to receive periodical updates.