Tales of the Iron Curtain

The Mantle shall be raised up again!

Of course, I am speaking about the Iron Curtain, our intramural spring 6 vs 6 soccer team up at UConn. This time around we have some new faces, besides the original crew (Pat, Jim, Jimmy, and yours truly) we have the Albanian Maniac Eddy who is our lock-down center midfielder and coming out of the 'Bury a solid right wing back named Dave.

Our first game was Sunday at the Shenkman Center. We showed up as a team pretty nervous, we bumped up to the "A" division which many regard as the toughest league since good teams usually drop down from Open. We checked out our competition as we walked in...they were a big team. Picture this. 6 of the most typical frat kids you can imagine, most likely seniors, all tan and big in retro NBA jerseys. None of the colors matched the actual teams colors, like baby blue laker jerseys, etc.

I started sizing their team up...ok, well it was likely that most of them had little soccer experience, but if they were soccer players in high school their size could give us fits. I decided to start our team with a two defender, three midfielder approach so we could really shove it down their throats, and I sat the bench to start. The Iron Curtain looked great the first 5 minutes, attacking on all cylinders and really putting a lot of pressure on these guys, clearly only one or two of them had any soccer experience.

I got in the lineup, and after another 10 minutes of scoreless play with countless opportunities for us, they countered and scored a lucky goal off the post. Frustrated, we fought hard to score, and finally found the back of the net when I picked up a defensive miscue and buried it. 1-1.

With one minute to go before half, the ball popped out to Jimmy who turned on the jets for a one on one with the keeper, giving us a nice 2-1 cushion at the break. We regrouped, talked strategy, and then came out and played possessed to put a beating into these guys 9-2 for a final score. Jimmy led the scoring on the day with five goals, Pat had two, Jim had one, and I finished with one. It was a great effort for our first game and gave us some good confidence to carry into the season. The frat guys were good sports about it and didn't get pissed off.

Bout to do mad work this season, we're gonna be scary good!