Last night at Trastevere Stadium and Virgilio high school, our men’s 11v11 soccer and coed volleyball team competed in their first friendly games of the season!

The JCU men’s 11v11 soccer team competed at Trastevere Stadium against the Trastevere Calcio team, and although it was only a friendly match, the team really made an effort as they continue to try and find a balance between one another.  Riccardo Concari, the coach, tried to give every team member some playing time to figure out what players work best together.  Overall, the team still has a lot of work to do before their first official game- but the effort and dedication to the sport show by the players was a great start…

Marco Iorio, our JCU Athletics Coordinator said about the game,

“Every year we have many new team players and it’s a challenging job for our coaches to find a good balance, but we have a lot of good players this semester and the team is becoming more unified week by week. Also, the attitude of the players is very positive and I think that this will help the coaches to build a very solid team!”

Our coed volleyball team also competed in their first friendly match last night against Villa Flaminia!  Although they had difficulty with the starting six and finding a good balance, in the 3rd set they lost by only 2 points, with an end score of 25-23.

Team captain Veronica Rusich said about the game,

“Even if we lost, I think that it wasn’t bad at all, especially since the other team was experienced and very good.  We need to keep up the hard work and together at practices with our coach Stefano, we are going to get better and better.  We won’t get frustrated because we lost, but get motivated because we have huge potential as a team! Go Gladiators!”