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.
This article appears in August 17 • 2012.