Florida soccer, under new coach Tony Amato, looks to get the 2021 season off on the right foot when the Gators open 2021 Thursday night at USF.
'This is completely different'
Tuesday, August 17, 2021 | Soccer, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Kouri Peace couldn't recall for certain what practice it was or even who the comment was directed toward. The junior forward just remembered how the moment struck her and how she felt compelled to articulate it to a nearby teammate.
By "this," Peace was referencing the tone, intensity and drive with which the Florida soccer team was going about its practice business. Voices were louder, speed faster, drills livelier. Coach Tony Amato
To be real, very little about Florida soccer in 2021 was going to be anything but completely different. UF icon Becky Burleigh led her final game last spring after announcing in January she was retiring from collegiate coaching at season's end. After a lengthy search to replace the only coach in program history — Burleigh won 431 games, 14 Southeastern Conference titles and the 1998 national championship over 26 seasons — the Gators landed on Tony Amato, by way of Arizona and with a track record for quick fixes, to be the second coach in their history.
With transition comes change, be it organic or intentional. That's what the team is experiencing during the preseason.
"I definitely think the energy and competitiveness is a lot higher now," said graduate midfielder Madison Alexander. "Every single drill we do is high intensity; short periods, as hard as we can go."
Amato's resume shows a career record of 215-102-31 and eight NCAA Tournament berths in stops at Division II Rollins (seven seasons), Stephen F. Austin (three) and Arizona (eight), including an 88-53-17 mark with the Wildcats in a rugged Pac-12 Conference.
Just how quickly the new coach and a newfound bounce on the practice field translates to results on game day remains to be seen, but some answers will start trickling in Thursday night when the Gators usher in the Amato era with the 2021 season opener at No. 20 South Florida in Tampa. The match figures to provide a nice baseline from which the new staff can start making evaluations. UF returns eight starters from last season, 23 returnees overall, led by by Alexander, who tops the team in returning points and minutes.
"I've been very pleased with the players' work rate, their ability to compete, approach to training every day, and how they're really looking at what we're putting in place, in terms of training and the standard and our expectations," said Amato, who turned 43 last week. "They're working extremely hard, and that's what the foundation really needs to be. We're not coaching them right now about working hard, competing and having grit. They're doing that so far and we can build off that in finding our strengths and maybe find what three things that we do to win games this year. That's a big part of college soccer; making sure you compete, making sure you have the right attitude and approach."
The buy-in was not particularly difficult for the new staff, given the Gators posted a 6-8-3 record in the COVID-split 2020-21 campaign that marked the worst in program history and including a 1-8-2 record against SEC opponents. In those 11 games versus league foes, UF scored just one goal in seven and just two in three of the other four. Kouri Peace
Of the six victories, half came against mid-majors College of Charleston, Georgia Southern and North Florida, plus one against Miami, in the spring half of the split season.
These are competitive players who have been stewing on frustrations for months now.,
"We have so much anger and excitement for the upcoming season, and we're talking about unleashing it on the field," said Peace, the talented speedster whose season was cut short in last season's third match due to an ankle injury. "We were pretty upset about the record last year, and it's something we never want to deal with again."
In addition to the motivation of last year's record, the Gators have been further invigorated by the style of play Amato brought with him from Tucson. His teams will be on the attack. Constantly.
In last week's preseason exhibition match against Southern Mississippi at Orange Beach, Ala., the Gators fell behind by a goal in the first half, but rallied for a pair of goals after intermission for a 2-1 victory, with the decisive score coming on a penalty kick by Alexander in the 78th minute.
Graduate Madison Alexander's 1,13 minutes and 11 points in 2020-21 leads the returning Gators in 2021.
"I think we're transitioning to be a more attacking and pressing team, rather than letting teams kind of come at us where we just hold the ball on the back line," Alexander said. "We're looking to go forward and score some goals."
Both goals against the Eagles were byproducts of UF keeping pressure on the defense.
"Our first goal, we showed a combination from some of our players, where we were able to pull the other team apart and get behind them with some passing combination — what we would call a 'key pass' — to a player running into the box. I think that can be something that is a strength of ours," Amato said. "We have to continue to develop a defensive identity, [with] how we're going to stop the other team. That would be the danger area that we're still working through."
For sure, plenty of questions remain.
"Are we going to press teams? Are we going to get people behind the ball? How are we going to stop some of the best teams on our schedule this year?" Amato asked. "Those are some things we have to improve on for sure.
Answers, invariably, await. In the interim, there are elements of excitement and newness that are only natural. In time, though, those will wear off — dates against powerhouses Florida State and North Carolina, for example, are less than three weeks away — and give way to expectations. And reality.
Meanwhile, the Gators are dealing just fine with the transition phase.
"They've shown a willingness to learn and embrace what we're trying to teach them," Amato said. "I can't speak to what they're saying or what the conversations are behind the scenes, but visually, what we're observing as a staff, we don't feel like we're fighting anything as we lay out our views of what we're going to do moving forward."
