UNCG Club Soccer
Daniel Johnson
Sports Editor
The past four weeks have been the busiest time of the year for the men’s club soccer team. On the final day of January, the team went on the road to Davidson to face off in a match. The following week, the club hosted both Appalachian State and North Carolina State for another tournament. Then, following a week of practice, the team competed in another weekend tournament. And finally, next Saturday, the club team from UNC Charlotte will be traveling to Greensboro to play the boys, making it four different matches/tournaments in a four week period before concluding the season in Elon on April 10. The team has three two-hour practices a week from Tuesday to Thursday.
With all this time being taken up by soccer, sometimes these players are forced to make sacrifices. In an interview with one of the team’s assistant coaches, Vitu Khonje, he talked about the players ability and inability to show up for practice because of the busy university class schedule.
“Sometimes exams and other things happens; that is part of college and boys make the best effort to come out here,” he said. “Thursday nights, some people do not come out and that tears fitness down a lot, but people try to stay in shape.”
Along with the fatigue of classes, there is the toll of traveling on the road. He discussed the toll of traveling all around the state in order to play in matches and tournaments and the team’s ability to travel to these places.
“It matters a lot. You have to take in part gas and whether or not people could come back in time for exams or some people could be traveling out, so that impact things a lot.” He continued by discussing the lack of strenuous travel when playing here in Greensboro.
“When teams come to us, that is great because these guys never used to get a lot of attention because this a new club team. Now this season, a lot more teams are visiting us and it is better.”
This club soccer began at the university in the spring of 2014. Coach Khonje compared the club team today to what it was back in its infancy two years ago.
“It is a lot better now. When it first started, the group of people we had was mixed between people who had soccer experience, but a lot more did not have soccer experience. Now the majority of kids here now have soccer experience,” he said.
Like mentioned in the first paragraph, following the four week string of tournaments and matches, the team will go all throughout the month of March without a single game or tournament. The next time the club team will play after this upcoming Saturday will be in the season finale against Elon. Coach Khonje explained the reason for the team’s long layoff
“We wanted to waited for the warmer climate basically before we started to schedule more games and a lot of it was that we were opened to organizing games previously but a lot of the teams did not want to play, as well. They had the same attitude as us.”
With the season just a month away from ending, coach Khonje talked about some of the hopes and concerns he has come next fall when the team reforms.
“That the club does not fall apart,” he said. “I believe a long time ago, there used to be another club team that fell apart and I hope that the guys here take it seriously and run it responsibly and everything.”
Categories: Campus Sports, Sports, Uncategorized
THE CAROLINIAN 
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