The NCAA Men’s Soccer Championship
right here in Santa Barbara

I had known that the cham­pi­onship men’s match­es for divi­sion one schools was to take place in San­ta Bar­bara but had not paid close atten­tion to the exact dates so missed the semi-finals.

Lucky for me an acquain­tance at Sat­ur­day’s UCSB wom­en’s bas­ket­ball game had attend­ed the semi-finals and men­tioned that the finals were today so I was able to dri­ve out and get the tick­et you see to your left and watch the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron “Zips” and the Louisville “Car­di­nals” in a fan­tas­tic soc­cer match.

It was score­less for 2/3 of the match with the Zips con­stant­ly attack­ing the Louisville goal when final­ly one effort paid off and they scored the only point of the match.

The final two min­utes were the most excit­ing of the match with Louisville ham­mer­ing the Akron goal con­tin­u­al­ly but with­out result.

On my way home I stopped for gas. Going in to pay I notice two col­lege age stu­dents in front of me wear­ing Akron t‑shirts with the logo “Death by a Thou­sand Pass­es”.  I had seen many of these at the match and real­ized as the match wore on why the slo­gan so fit the team. Also inter­est­ing was to observe the stu­dents walk back to a large rental van hold­ing sev­er­al of their peers and head home to Akron.