The Eastern Illinois men’s soccer team is less than one week away from the start of the 2009 season, and they will have one last chance to tune-up today at Lakeside Field.

Eastern (1-0 preseason) will play its final exhibition match as it hosts Butler (1-0 preseason) of the Horizon League at 6 p.m.

Even though it is the final preseason match, Eastern coach Adam Howarth will not change his coaching mindset from the rest of the preseason matches.

“We have had one of our tougher preseasons this year. We have really pushed the guys hard,” Howarth said. “My philosophy is in the preseason, everybody plays. We want to try and get everybody some good looks, some good minutes for everybody. At the very minimum, we want everyone to play for 45 minutes.”

He said the game will be the Panthers toughest of the preseason and this should allow them to see where the team is.

The Panthers are full of fresh faces this season as they welcome 10 new players, including six freshmen.

Howarth said everything he does in the preseason is making sure players are ready for the first game of the season.

Butler head coach Kelly Findley said the last thing he cares about in the preseason is winning. His main focus is that his team adapts to the set system of play and he will rotate players while trying to find the best lineup.

“We are looking to try several groups together to find our best lineup and get more organized, as opposed to just winning,” Findley said. “Most of the players are not ready for 90 minutes, but we will get them significant minutes to get closer to that.”

Eastern won its first exhibition match of the season 3-2 Thursday against St. Xavier in Effingham. The Panthers started seven players who were not with the team the previous season.

Saturday Eastern held its inter-squad match with the upperclassman notching a 3-2 win in a rain-shortened affair.

The underclassman held a 2-0 lead at halftime, but the upperclassman battled back behind the feet of junior forward Alex Harrison and junior midfielder Darby Kehoe.

Harrison scored two goals and Kehoe scored onece, all within the final seven minutes.

Kehoe said the intensity of the game was high because the younger guys really wanted to knock off the upperclassman.

He said he liked that the upperclassman had the mentality that they would win the game, even when they were down.

Senior defender Jeff Kupiec said he was really impressed with the mindset of the upperclassman team.

“Usually, since I have been here whenever we get down we hang our heads, we can’t bounce back,” Kupiec said.

“This time (when we got down), nobody said a word about it we just kept playing and we knew the goals would come.”

“The inter-squad game was great. I thought the intensity level was really high,” Howarth said.

Following Tuesday’s game the Panthers open their regular season against Valparaiso on Sept. 1 at 1 p.m. at Lakeside Field.

The team then hits the road for five straight games before returning home at the end of the month against Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne at 1 p.m. on Sept. 27.

Dan Cusack can be reached at 581-7944 or at dscusack@eiu.edu.

Freshman midfielder Ryan Childs takes a shot during overtime of an October 13, 2008 game against Oral Roberts at Lakeside Field. The Panthers take on Butler in their final exhibition today at 4 p.m. at Lakeside Field. (Amir Prellberg/The Daily Eastern New

(more…)