Season 3, Entry #1
Dear Golden Bear fans,
Welcome to Season III of Fer Play! It has been almost a year since I last wrote here, and the extent to which the Cal men’s soccer program has changed has been immense. For starters, former head coach Kevin Grimes retired after 22 years of coaching at Cal, which is crazy considering that all our current players were not even born when he first started coaching the Blue & Gold. The initials KG and Cal soccer are pretty much synonyms at this point, which says a lot about all that he accomplished here in Berkeley. Today, I am writing to you from the Leonard Griffin era. In all honesty, it’s hard to think of a better man for the job. Not only has he had success with his previous teams, but he was even an assistant coach on KG’s staff here at Cal a few years ago, so he’s quite familiar with this program & its culture.
This entire transition has obviously been an adjustment for everyone. From tactical upgrades to new team culture practices, this team has been through it all. But there was one constant throughout this entire process: we always had each other’s backs as teammates & brothers. Call me cheesy if you’d like, but we honestly couldn’t have made this transition as smooth as it was without each other’s support. From start to finish, we set standards as a team to hold each other accountable, we were open to new ideas, and were willing to make sacrifices if it meant helping the team continue to head in the right direction. This team improved so much in the spring thanks to the work we all put in, guided by the leadership of Jake Wilson, Henry Foulk, & Ben Simon, who have been with us every step of the way.
After finding success in the spring, as well as in our trip to Italy (more on that in the blogs ahead), we were definitely expecting more out of the start to this season. We haven’t kicked off this new era exactly the way we had hoped to, but what I’ve realized just now as I’m sitting at Caffé Strada while writing this blog is how far along we’ve come in just a few months. This group of collegiate soccer players has sparked a change in this program that may eventually come to change some lives for the better, & we haven’t even realized it because we’re so busy making it happen day in & day out.
Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in everything that we’re up to as student-athletes that we forget to take a moment…
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