Yes Pitt looked sloppy the first 15 minutes. I want to make myself feel better and I’m just going to account that to 1st game of the year and lots of freshmen or sophomores playing plus a couple transfers so maybe some nerves in their first games of the season for Pitt. Thought the first half was pretty sloppy but Pitt made some good adjustments at halftime and 2nd half of the 1st game and through the 2nd game it was total domination by Pitt. Virginia vs Duke will be a great game as well. I am so happy that ACC soccer is back. Hopefully by October we will be allowed to see it in person. Are there any ACC teams that are allowing fans now? I just know Pitt isn’t allowing them through September as of now. Not sure on others
Call me cynical, but i would rather see Pitt compete vs UNC and lose 3-0 than beat up App state 2x. Don't really see the point of that. I hope they have a good year. As hinted above, I dont think its fair to expect kids to roll off a 3hr+ bus ride and slip into top gear on the soccer field without parents, friends and fans to root them on. I think you will see some interesting results and performances. Some kids need the adrenaline, others dont perform well under that scrutiny. Some coaches are really going to use this year to develop freshmen. Others less so. I found it interesting that excluding the GK, Duke used 6 players for 85+ minutes vs Wake - 96 mins UVA used 1- 90 mins. Feels like a transition year for UVA.
In a normal year most teams would play a couple of games against teams similar to App State. Pitt is pretty much the only ACC team that looks like they tried to get as normal of a schedule as they could. Also that was about an 8 hour bus ride for Pitt. If you look at the previous 2 years Pitt has won 1 game on the road. They have 10 away games this year. Looks like Waldrum is trying to take his young team on the road and teach them how to win. I believe you have to learn how to win. I think its smart that Waldrum scheduled some games on the road against some lesser teams rather than just playing an ACC schedule. Still playing against 9 ACC teams and Navy twice.
Well, you've asked a serious question and I'll try to give you a serious answer. I support the lockdowns and am actually angry that we didn't do a better job locking down in the first place. As to how we are doing, well, this is the week that I got depressed: I didn't want to get out of bed on Monday. Pre-pandemic, I worked with adults with intellectual and/or development disabilities (IDD) and was a job coach helping our population find jobs and succeed at them. And I'm pretty damn good, actually. The job can be staffed, successfully, by people lacking even a high school education. What is needed is compassion, reliability and punctuality, and a love of interesting people. I stand out in that the job coaching is my thing and I have found that this aspect is extremely challenging and intellectually stimulating. I kind of wish I'd found this field 10 years ago (and if I had, there's a good chance I'd be in position to be running this place by now.) Bottom line, Ioved what I was doing. But now, during the pandemic, I am just a babysitter, staffing a residential house with two young men. Our pop is likely to be immunocompromised, and since we have actual, physical charge of these folks, we have to be even more careful than the rest of you in the real world. I like these guys -- they are interesting, high functioning, conversational men -- but I'm just a nanny. We won't be back at anything like pre-pandemic levels of operation until we get a vaccine. I could be doing this for another year. And that's terrifying. I don't know if I can do this for another year. My wife lost her job back in June. She worked for the company I did. She recruited me. She would tell you something different, but her job was recruiting, basically, except that we have no services to offer and all the outreach kind of events that she would go were canceled. She did get a generous severance package, and her two months unemployed coincided with the last two of enhanced benefits, so we did OK in that. She's a talented woman and she got three job offers in the first two weeks. At 60% of her former salary. She didn't take them. She barely covered her salary with her new job, but the company is run by idiots and it may very well close up doors due to COVID. We are OK financially. I was salaried, but for the first month+ of the lockdown, when I was first assigned to residential, I earned overtime. A lot of it. They've corrected the error. We didn't go on vacation this summer and we had planned a pretty expensive one, so we didn't go last year either to save up for this summer's trip. That money is sitting there still. We haven't been to the theater, we're not eating out, gas is minimal. We're flush. Plus I made up for years of not being a good negotiator and overpaying for cars by getting a steal on our new car and we were able to pay cash and not have 4 years of $350 car payments. We banked out $2400 pandemic stimulus check. So, I do know that we are doing, in some ways, better than most financially. But coronavirus broke my family. I can't say that we got guardianship or custody of my god daughter, because we got neither, but we did get possession. We have tried getting her three times over the past decade and it's never worked. She was literally kidnapped from our house the first time she stayed with us. She came to live with us first week in January, and suffice to say, she's had a pretty shit life. She's lived with 6 or 7 different people, gone to school in 5 different districts, and three times in her life, I have gone to pick her up where some adult has dropped her off, with her possession in bags strewn around her. She has her issues, obviously, but we were dealing with them. When school went virtual, she couldn't handle it. Not having the routine killed her, she flipped her days and nights, she started sneaking out in the middle of the night, and we gave her a lot of latitude with her school work, but when it looked like she was going to fail, we had to step in. And she wasn't going to have it. She's 17 and been ignored for too much of her life, and she ran away. As much as any parent in this country, we needed school. Losing the school day was the straw that broke the camel's back. She's now living with her father, who she has never lived with before, and she's already changed schools once this year. So make that 6 different school districts. So we've got bitter heartache, depression and an uncertain future. I desperately want everything to get back to normal. But 200,000 people have died (and when we add the excess deaths when this is over, we're going to have a much higher death toll.) There's going to be a second wave and it's going to hit us in the winter, when we're even more cooped up. I feel like my family has sacrificed, and lost, much this year, and it's mostly been for nothing. If we had really locked down, rather than just played at it, we might not be nearly at this death toll. The sacrifice might have been worth it. But instead, welcome to the perpetual pandemic. Being able to watch football ain't going to make any of this better.
Maybe, Its not just a Pitt thing. Most teams schedule a few "easier" games. In a full season i kinda get it. I dont think you learn how to win vs better competition by beating bad teams, but by the same token its good to gain early season confidence. I like Pitt. Hope they do well
Updates regarding Big 10 sports other than football, according to the conference, will be provided shortly. The conference has adopted very strict -- and likely very expensive -- protocols for football. It will be interesting to see what the protocols will be for other sports. The following language is from the Big 10 announcement: Eventually all Big Ten sports will require testing protocols before they can resume competition. Updates regarding fall sports other than football, as well as winter sports that begin in the fall including men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, and wrestling, will be announced shortly.
Thank you, Val1 for this post. I am sorry to hear about your Goddaughter. Please know that although you feel defeated her current situation, your continued support and love for her is known by her. When she gets to a point where she looks back, she will always see you and your wife as her rock, her source of stability and unconditional love. America's uncoordinated response to COVID stems from a void of leadership. Our slow start to address the virus and get testing set up to be able to track the virus EARLY, allowed the virus to cause much more death and economic damage than we would have experienced if we had true leadership who unified Americans in a time of disaster, and who did not seek to gain from a disaster by bringing partisanship into the response. Our slow start was a conscious CHOICE by people who knew clearly how deadly the virus was in early February, and yet continued to misinform the country about steps they should start taking. When Americans rise up together to accomplish something - history shows we accomplish great things. But bringing Americans together is not on the agenda for the current administration who prefer to divide, misinform, instill fear, undermine any checks or balances to avoid accountability, lie, lie and tweet conspiracy theories....but not lead. Oh - certain readers here can keep their "Gosh why do you Liberals hate America so much!?" comments, as I'm a proud member of RVAT - Republican Voters Against Trump. My best wishes to you and your family, Val1.
Signings are done remotely already by rule so should not be affected. Most are done electronically now so there's not even any exchange of paperwork anymore. Adobe Sign and DocuSign have killed the fax machine (and overnight FedEx). Lots of them will be 'virtual' without any packed gyms for sure. I read some tweets about the D1 Dead Period extension. 400+ comments and not one positive. Who can explain this decision? Plenty of schools are managing campus admissions visits. Many are training their teams and some playing games. Basketball is scheduled to start around Thanksgiving. But you can't sit in a chair with a mask on and watch a club game? or walk a kid around campus? Have schools had problems with visitors? Not complying or getting sick? I don't see any consequences of this decision that are good really for anyone. Let's wait until the winter when we Have to stay indoors and then do visits?? Really?
I cant speak for all schools but I know Pitt has a no visitor policy right now. Would be hard to do a visit when you cant get into any of the buildings or see anything.
The biggest problem most division 1 coaches have is that they’re not allowed to recruit but it’s okay for division 2s and 3s to recruit? Schools can play, practice but they can’t recruit!? You can have kids in person, in class, but not host a camp on the weekend or have a recruit stop by? You can’t go off campus and recruit at your own risk? Just doesn’t make sense. Obviously things are different across the country, but sucks to penalize everyone just because some schools aren’t open, some places have travel bans. Poor volunteer assistants across the country continue to miss out on camp money as well. A quiet period would have at least been helpful, but nope. and posters here are correct, the early signing period date will not be changed. Unless new legislation is proposed/decided on by the NLI people, and to this point it hasn’t happened.
A piece of legislation that flew under the radar yesterday was the NCAA confirming that early enrollees (HS seniors who graduate early and enroll in January) and mid-year transfers won’t be eligible this spring to play. I understand the early enrollee part, but sucks for kids wanting to transfer at mid-year.
Yeah I don’t get why D2 and D3 can recruit but D1 cant. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. But its the NCAA so nothing ever does
Do DII and DIII coaches have immunity from coronavirus, and DI coaches do not? Unbelievable. Seriously, what is the reason for the difference there?
One thing to remember with the D1 vote is it was a council for all sports. Soccer may not be the driving voice in those meetings. While it is a soccer forum we do have to remember that soccer is the smallest voice in that meeting most likely. So football and basketball probably had a lot more weight when it came to making that decision.
Thunderstorms all afternoon, but calling for "heavy" thunderstorms for the 6:00 and 7:00 hours. Sheesh.