Traveling abroad

Tea and crumpets will help the Sacred Heart boys soccer team gear up for the fall season.

Sacred Heart coach Carlos McField is taking a group of players to England on a trip that will include two top-level training sessions and four games against European clubs.

“We’re using it as a preseason trip, get some training in,” McField said. “It’s not just soccer. It’s a chance to go over there to a country that’s got a lot of history and tradition. Just to see a different culture, get out of our country and experience something new. Then once you’re over there, it’s just a football-mad country.”

The group is made up of primarily Sacred Heart soccer players, but includes a Smith-Cotton student and a couple of Barstow athletes.

Jon Athon, Nate Bailey, John Beykirch, Alex Cline, Brent Gerke, Lakin Kehde, Ed Koenig, Tim Makarewicz, Bradley O’Conner, Wes Register,

Jacob Rosendale and Jonathan Starke are the Sacred Heart players.

Jonathan Gunter will represent Smith-Cotton, and Brent Neihart and Braden Neihart, of Barstow, will join the group from Sedalia.“I think (the trip) will get us a lot more excited for the season coming up, so that we’ll be ready to play,” said Athon. “We’ll learn how to play soccer better — against older kids. These kids are going to be more experienced than us and  we’ll probably lose, but it’s going to be fun anyway.”

The nine-day trip will be the first experience overseas for many of the athletes, including 16-year-old Cline.

“I’m really excited about the soccer,” Cline said. “I think we’ll come into the season with more chemistry after going to England because we haven’t really played a lot together. But with this preseason training, we’ll get to come together as a team.”

In all, 15 players and 26 people are on the trip, which will include plenty of sight-seeing opportunities, along with top-notch soccer.

The group is set to leave Sedalia on Saturday and arrive in England by mid-morning on July 20. Before heading to the hotel, the tour will stop at Windsor Castle and Stamford Bridge — the home of Chelsea FC soccer club.

They’ll see the West End Show, “We Will Rock You” on July 21 and the team will have its first training session in the morning July 22. That night,

Sacred Heart will take on Lewisham Youth FC in its first game.

“They’ve got a good strong offense, so it should help our defense,” Gerke said of the English clubs. “I’m a defender, so that’s what I’m looking forward to — take some of their skills and applying it to our sports here at Sacred Heart.”
July 24, they will visit Wales and Conway Castle and play their second game, this time against Newtown FC. They’ll tour Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United FC.

Another training session and the team’s third game are set for July 25, along with a tour of Reebok Stadium, home of the Bolton Wanderers.

The trip winds down July 26 with a fourth game and a preseason professional soccer game. The Gremlins fly back to the United States on July 27.

“I think it’s going to help develop their soccer skills a great deal,” McField said. “Just doing their training sessions with the professional teams. ...

They’re going to have to step up their game because the coaches over there are used to elite-level athletes. Even at younger ages, they’re used to having it done perfect.”

McField said he started planning for this trip more than a year ago, trying to see if players were interested. Everything started to fall into place this past September.

McField has been on this trip once before when he was with Pembroke Hill.

“That trip was in 2005, that was the year that we won state,” he said. “Our experience over there helped kind of get us in the right mind-set going into the season.”