USL Feature
Saturday, April 30, 2011
By NICHOLAS MURRAY
After reaching the U.S. Open Cup last season, but missing out on the USL Premier Development League playoffs, the Central Florida Kraze open the 2011 PDL season tonight against Fort Lauderdale Schulz Academy looking to get the season off to the right start.
For Kraze coach Joe Avallone, the first order of business is for the team to try and get back into the U.S. Open Cup and tonight’s game at Rollins College at 7:30 p.m. is the first step to get on that track.
“What I do is I set little goals, and that’s our first goal,” Avallone said of the U.S. Open Cup. “I think we’ve got the returning players I wanted, truly the returning players I wanted are back, and I think we added a little bit more this year.”
Last season the Kraze almost pulled an upset against USSF Division 2-Pro League side Miami FC in the tournament’s first round eventually falling in overtime after pushing the Blues to the limit in regulation. It’s a defeat that still stings for Avallone, meaning the motivation to return and get another shot at a professional team is high for his club.
Getting there from the Southeast Division, though, will be no small task. With a number of historically powerful franchises such as the IMG Bradenton Academics and last season’s division champions the Mississippi Brilla and newcomer the FC JAX Destroyers all standing in the way, Avallone is under no illusions to the task his side faces not just in Open Cup qualifying but also in its quest to return to the PDL playoffs at the end of the season.
“We’re in a very tough division,” Avallone said. “Jacksonville is highly motivated in what they’re doing, IMG is always tough, we’ve been in the league as long as they have, and then you’ve got Mississippi, which is a really fine team, so it’s a very tough division. You could really look at this division as one of the tougher divisions in the country, there’s no doubt about it.”
Which means Avallone’s group will have to come together in order to compete.
“It always comes down to team chemistry, getting the guys in a short period of time to start believing and start playing in some semblance of order,” Avallone said. “That’s always the biggest challenge, but that’s something that I’ve always been able to do. We’ve always competed, I look at us as a winning franchise, this is the start of our 13th year and we’ve never had a losing season, we won it all in 2004, so it’s just a matter of quickly putting it together, getting the players to believe in each other.”
The club has some new additions to its line-up this season off the field, with a partnership with USL PRO club Orlando City and a new sponsorship deal with Right Brain Media that has helped revamp the club’s website. On the field, though, there are still a number of familiar faces that Avallone is glad to see back on the field including Johnathan Mendoza from Stetson University, who was named to the National Soccer Coaches Association of American All-South Region team last fall.
“This is his fifth year,” Avallone said of Mendoza, “he was with us at 17 and he’ll be my captain this year and he’s just a key player for us, and then we’ve got a lot of role players who just accept what they do. Daniel Sackman is another key player, he’s another Stetson Hatter.”
Whatever happens this season, though, Avallone expects that his side will be up to the challenges it faces, starting with Schulz Academy.
“I think it’s going to be a very highly competitive year,” Avallone said, “and we need a good start to the season and that starts [tonight].”