Thomas Campbell Blog #4: It's all about the 'stache

Thomas Campbell is a senior forward on the UNC Greensboro men's soccer team. This year will be different for the three-year starter, however. Campbell, UNCG's leading scorer last season, will be sitting out his redshirt season while recovering from a knee injury he suffered last spring. Each Friday, Campbell will blog about the Spartans' soccer season, his teammates, his classes and his journey back to the soccer pitch in the rehab process. Today is the fourth installment.

Welcome back.

This week has been an exciting one with some ups and some downs. As I said at the end of last week, we had a big game coming up against UNC Wilmington. We won that game, 1-0, on a great goal by Tim Masters, who actually transferred from UNCW before his junior year. It was a great out-of-conference win, especially following a great win against Campbell. The win against UNCW put us into 10th in the region in the NSCAA poll.

Monday was a full day - back to work with school, rehab, and practice. My little puppy got neutered, rehab was hard, and school was even harder. Practice was okay as we prepared for a game Wednesday night against Charlotte on the road.

We traveled to Charlotte on Wednesday for another huge out of conference game. Charlotte has some quality wins under their belt and has been in the national rankings this year for the first time in a decade. We played a great game, but fell short 1-0 on an unfortunate deflection. I think we were the better team, but we did not get the result we were looking for.

This week is a big weekend for our school and our team. It is Homecoming so it's a huge alumni weekend. We are fortunate enough to have close alumni that support the team a great deal. Unfortunately, the "sacmaster" himself, Scott Jones will not be able to make it to Homecoming as he finishes up his season down in Puerto Rico. Scotty was a huge part of the program when I came in as a freshman, an All-American and a captain. I spoke to him on Wednesday and he told me I had to "spice" the blog up a little bit. (Well, guess that means someone's reading it!)

Since I have been on the team we have always had a great time joking around on certain issues. Mustaches' have always been on the top of our list. Nothing against people who rock a stash, but it's just hilarious when someone under the age of 25 has one. It has always been a challenge on the team to see who could have the best 'stache. This season, we decided that we would make some fun with it, so we picked one person to start it. They had to grow a 'stacheand wear it for 3 days. After 3 days they have to designate someone else on the team to grow it (under the condition that they actually can grow one). After their 3 days they designate someone else to rock one and so on. The beginning of the week was Striney's 'stache (Matt Strine, for those outside of UNCG) followed by maybe the best one of all time, the Icelandic captain, Jokull Elisabetarson.

As the week closes to an end, it gets closer and closer to the big Homecoming game Saturday night vs. Brown. We usually have a great crowd and a great atmosphere. These are the games that make me want to just put my cleats on and run out there with no regards to a recovering injured knee.

I look forward to the festivities which begin Friday night with a little get together with some of the alumni and some people associated with the team. It's a good way to start off the weekend. Hope the alumni have a great weekend and enjoy the few days back at the good ol' G, as well as some of the older players that make an appearance. It's always nice to see some of the guys that have graduated since I have been here.

Till next time ... Vamos Greensboro. Totsiens.

Thomas Campbell, #7

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