24 • Spurs & Feathers
May 27, 2015
Berson excited about strong spring, upcoming 2015 season by brian hand Executive Editor
The longest tenured head coach in NCAA Division I at one school, South Carolina men’s soccer head coach Mark Berson will begin his 38th season in charge in the 2015 season. The recent recipient of the Bill Jeffery Award given by the NSCAA to an individual for outstanding service in college soccer, Berson obviously has been around the pitch a long time, but not many things excite him more than ramping up for another season. In fact, Berson is ecstatic about what is in place currently with Gamecock men’s soccer. “Our recruiting has been very good,” Berson stated. “I’m really pleased with the group we have coming in and I think the returning group has done a good job. Very anxious. The excitement in coaching is that each new year is a brand new sheet of paper to be written on. I think that Carolina soccer fans are going to see a lot of new faces, they’re going to see a lot of different faces out there and that’s exciting in any sport when you have that. I think it should be really fun.” The 2014 regular-season for South Carolina men’s soccer had its ups like beating No. 18 Clemson, 2-1, in the second overtime on Tuesday, Sept. 2 at Stone Stadium, but just like any season it also had its downs. Nevertheless, Berson’s squad responded down the stretch of the season to advance to the Conference USA Tournament championship match. Berson believes the strong way South Carolina closed the fall of 2014 continued into the Gamecocks’ spring preparations for the 2015 regular-season. “The momentum that we had at the end of the year carried on in the spring,” Berson said. “Really by the mid-point of the spring, the themes that we had established, objectives that we had established were well-entrenched, well-understood and well-executed. That was really, really good. I think the team left the spring semester physically in really good shape, tactically sharper, really having a clearer idea of the number of principles that we want to get across and I think there was great momentum and morale. I think they were really excited about the (upcoming) fall.” One of the things that helped South Carolina down the stretch in their eventual 10-10 season in 2014 was changing some things
photo of Koty Millard by allen sharpe
tactically. Berson and his staff continued to implement some new things into their system during the spring of 2015. “We certainly want to be tactically more flexible next year,” Berson noted. “We showed that this fall when we changed a number of things at the mid-point of the season and were able to show a lot of different things in games against opponents that I think were very successful and our players recognized that. They’ve embraced a lot of different things that we’ve been doing.”
Every spring preparation for South Carolina men’s soccer and really any team is always different due to players graduating and other varying things, but overall Berson thinks the Gamecocks put together a solid spring. “We were able to do a lot of teaching, (we were) able to take it a lot slower in the spring and cover a lot of the basic themes that you want to have in place for the fall. We were able to get a lot done and I think the analytics that we have in place for our offseason weight training and our offseason conditioning were
very much on target. I think our players have bought in to a lot of the things that we are doing that are a little bit new and progressive in terms of our measurements and our analytics. That’s been really good,” Berson said. South Carolina men’s soccer reports back to campus on Aug. 11 to get ready for the 2015 season. The Gamecocks will practice for the first time on Aug. 12 and then just a few short days later will play their first exhibition on Aug. 16 against Gardner-Webb.