Hello and welcome to the Men's Soccer blog! My name is Duncan Foster and this is my second and final year playing for the Eagles here at Carson-Newman. I will endeavor to give you all an insight into what is going on behind the scenes this year, from tactics to all the dressing room antics that occur on a daily basis.

We have had a tough and frustrating start to the season following the success that we had last year. Preseason was what we expected to be as returners, it is the most physically and mentally draining training week that I have ever been a part of.  However, we all battled through together and came out stronger both individually and collectively.

Following preseason we travelled to Florida, and convincingly beat the University of Tampa, however, because we played a player who was to be suspended for the game from getting a red card in title game last year, we had to fofeit. The game against St. Leo was a tough lesson for us all as it was a first chance to show what we were about against another nationally ranked team, and we came up short. However, we found things to focus our training on and improvements that had to be made – and following this we went into the game away at Wingate full of confidence, but for it to be postponed due to lightning.

This week has been a huge week of growth for us as a new team. With so many new faces coming into the locker room and onto the pitch with us, sometimes it takes a while to gel, but I feel that we have turned a corner and we all know what we expect of each other now. We had a devastating home defeat on Wednesday, but we went home soul searching individually, and came together for a very honest talk on Thursday, and this showed with our domination of Catawba last night. Despite going down to 10 men for the majority of the second half, we stuck together and fought on, working with the spirit that got us so far last season.

It's pleasing that last night we looked so solid defensively, and created chances going forward. There is still much work to do, but we are back on the right track and can only get better from here.

All the new boys have settled into the team well and there is a great atmosphere around the locker room. Whether it's from making our roster video, through to meals out as a team, everybody is more comfortable with each other now and there are plenty of jokes flying round on a daily basis.

We wish to thank you all for turning out to support us on Wednesday and Saturday, it does mean a lot to us and gives us an extra boost when we are on the field. We go into a stretch of three away games before returning to play Tusculum at home on Oct. 1, so it'd be brilliant to see you all in the bleachers for that one.

Duncan 

Throughout the 2014 soccer season, senior defender Duncan Foster will write about his experiences at Carson-Newman. A new installment will be released each Sunday evening.