Austin Aztex News Release -- www.austinaztex.com
Friday, May 10, 2013
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Austin Aztex took to the road to face the Texas Dutch Lions, hosting their inaugural game, to start the 2012 PDL season. The Aztex returned home with three points after a 4-0 win.
This year, the Aztex are hoping to repeat their performance from a year ago when they travel to face expansion franchise Oklahoma City FC on Saturday night. This time, the Aztex have a year under their belt and confidence from the core of a squad which reached the USL PDL Southern Conference Championship Game.
“We want to build off of what we did last year,” Aztex forward Kris Tyrpak said. “It is about the team and going for that championship this year so we all need to go out and bust it.”
The road to the team’s goal begins with Oklahoma City FC, which joined the league this season and will offer few familiar faces aside from 2008-2009 Austin Aztex U23 member Chris Spendlove.
“It is a new team and we don’t know much about them” Aztex defender Leone Cruz said. “We have gone through preseason and we have prepared well, both physically and tactically. So going into it I think we manage the things that we can control, take care of ourselves and make sure we put our best foot forward and start off the season well.”
The Aztex head into the season opener after wrapping up their preseason with a 5-1 record and outscoring their preseason opponents 21-4. The squad introduced Aaron Guillen, Justin Franz, and John Kaschak to training sessions this week while head coach Paul Dalglish worked to get the team up to speed.
“We’ve got the team together that I think is going to start the season for us, so our training right now is a crash course in tactics,” Dalglish said. “It was an intense week on trying to teach the players the different phases of the game.”
The Aztex look to send a mix of returning core players from last year’s squad such as Zack Pope, Zachary Garcia, Kris Tyrpak, and Chuy Cortes while mixing in talented newcomers Max Gunderson, Andres Cuero, and Aaron Guillen.