Soccer Watch
Longhorns open regular-season play, U.S. women take home gold, and more
By Nick Barbaro, Fri., Aug. 17, 2012
The UT Longhorns open their regular season this Friday, 7pm, at Myers Stadium, hosting the Dayton Flyers – 19-4 last year, and the three-time defending Atlantic 10 champions. Free admission if you donate five school supplies. The Horns, under new Head Coach Angela Kelly, will be a work in progress, with a lot of young players and a fairly tough schedule, including nationally ranked West Virginia in the new-look, nine-team Big 12. The Longhorn Network will show all 12 home games live this season. I caught Friday's exhibition win over Texas State on LHN – with Kristin Cummins scoring the lone goal in the 75th minute and UT looking ragged but dominating play with a 22-7 shot count – and UT and LHN put on a pretty good show. Though I must say, it also made me appreciate just how high the talent level was at the just-completed Olympics, how exquisitely hard it is to make the passes, control the ball, or even insert the close-ups, that had seemed so routine for the past two weeks of viewing. Speaking of which ...
Congrats to the U.S. women and Mexico men on their Olympic gold. The U.S. has a dominant team with a lot of star power – Wambach, Solo, Lloyd, Rapinoe, Morgan – who lived up to the hype. And Mexico shocked the world by throttling star-studded Brazil in the final, but get used to it: Mexico's been tearing up the world youth tournaments for the last several years, and with those kids now matured, it is looking to be a powerhouse for the next decade.
Over in Europe, the 2012-13 seasons are already under way. Holland and Russia started this past weekend; the rest of the continent starts this weekend or next.
